Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero

A Ryzen 5000 series refresh, but does the “Dark” matter?

- ZAK STOREY

IN THE MIDDLE of last year, we took a look at the original ROG Crosshair VIII Hero from Asus. It was an exceptional piece of engineering, with a ton of potent connectivity, and it performed well combined with a Ryzen 7 3700X. However, it came with one major caveat: The cost. Back then, we lamented the slow creep of that price tag with generation after generation of Asus’s products. Indeed, the X370 Hero launched at $255, the X470 at $285, and the latest-generation Hero tipped the scales at an incredible $360 ($380 if you wanted Wi-Fi).

There’s an argument to be had that the PCIe 4.0 connection standard is far more difficult to produce, and we have seen price increases across the board from all manufacturers, but X570 has been out for some time now, and as with all things in the world of tech, the longer it’s around, the easier it typically becomes to manufacture, which in turn should also make it cheaper to produce. Take a look at DDR4 and PCIe 4.0 SSDs as an example.

So, how much does Asus’s latest X570 Hero refresh (released in time for the 5000 series processors) cost? $400. That’s an extra $40 on top of the already solid X570 solution, or $20 more compared to the old VIII Hero Wi-Fi variant.