Asus Rog Crosshair VIII Dark Hero Review

Do you want to know about Asus rog crosshair VIII dark hero? This article will review the Asus rog crosshair VIII dark hero. The Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero has an all-black design, 90A VRMs (up from 60A), eight SATA ports, 12 USB ports on the back IO, and no longer has a chipset fan. 

However, The Dark Hero increased our Ryzen 9 5950X above 5 GHz, so we’re receiving precisely what we paid for, despite the $400 price tag. Overclocking went off without a hitch, with our CPU operating at 4.4 GHz with all cores and threads enabled and 32GB of DDR4 running at 3600 MHz.

Asus debuted their X570-based motherboards, including the ROG Crosshair VIII Hero, in the early months of 2019. We appreciated the original’s 12 USB ports, look, and other features. 

Fast forward to today, and the ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero has arrived, along with AMD’s outstanding but hard-to-find 5000 series CPUs. As the name suggests, the Dark edition becomes completely black, increases power supply, and removes the chipset fan from the previous version.

The Asus X570 portfolio has grown to include 14 new boards from the TUF, Prime, Strix, WS (Workstation), and ROG brands. Since our previous check, Asus had introduced a Mini-ITX option, which was the sole form factor lacking when the product was first released. 

Today’s product stack includes many motherboards with different sizes, feature sets, and pricing ranges. The X570 range is expected to have something for everyone.

Asus Crosshair Hero Dark features the exact phase count (16) as the non-Dark variant but employs premium 90A components instead of 60A. The 90A components are among the most durable we’ve encountered, and they should be able to withstand any ambient or sub-ambient overclocking with ease. 

Although, The style is another significant distinction between the Dark and the original Hero. The Dark uses a grooved design on the chipset/M.2 covers and the VRM heatsinks surround the socket to change things up a little with the heatsinks. 

The original “Hero” now reads “ROG” with RGB lights on top of the back IO. The processor fan is no longer present in the Dark, which will please some users — even if we found the fan on the previous model to be quiet.

Overview of the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero

As we get closer to the board, we start with the PCIe 4.0 slots, which consist of three complete x16 slots electrically numbered x16, x8, and x4 in that sequence. Front panel audio, fan connectors, and USB headers are located at the bottom.

All eight SATA ports and the USB 3.2 Gen 1 front-panel header are accessible by spinning around the edge.

The Gen 2 front-panel header, 24-pin power, and the start and reset buttons are all found farther down. We come to ARGB and RGB headers, the CPU Fan, and the 8-pin and 4-pin CPU power connectors as we wrap around the next side.

Overview of the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero Features:

Socket AMD AM4

Prepared for AMD Ryzen 2nd and 3rd Generation CPUs, as well as AMD Ryzen 3rd Generation processors

Comprehensive thermal design

ROG Water Cooling Zone, passive chipset heatsink, M.2 aluminum heatsinks.

Robust Power delivery

 14+2 TI power stages rated for 90A, ProCool II power connections, microfine alloy chokes, and 10K Japanese-made black metallic capacitors are all part of the designed power solution.

Connectivity with high throughput

Onboard Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) with MU-MIMO, 2.5 Gbps and Gigabit Ethernet, and USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C

DIY Friendly Design

Pre-installed I/O shield, ASUS SafeSlot, BIOS flashback, and quality components are included for optimum durability.

Unmatched personalization

Aura Sync RGB lighting, which is proprietary to ASUS and has RGB headers and Gen. 2 addressable connections

Industry-leading ROG audio

To offer high-fidelity audio to headsets and exotic cans, ROG SupremeFX S1220 is coupled with the legendary ESS ES9023P.

Analyze PCBs and Circuits

Dark Hero’s VRM is an eight-phase design with 16x Texas Instruments X95410RR stages working in tandem. ASMedia1074 for back panel Gen 2 is below the VRM, and the Intel i211AT is towards the edge. The AMD X570 chipset, which sits right below the memory slots, takes up a lot of space on the Dark Hero.

UEFI

Aside from a few additional features on the Dark Hero, the EFI hasn’t changed. The primary menu displays the processor, RAM, and BIOS version information. All of the work is done in Extreme Tweaker, including configuring DOCP for RAM and overclocking.

Options for customizing system components, such as SATA and NVMe storage, are available in the advanced menu.

You may set up your fans automatically or manually using the Monitor tab. At the same time, the tool menu allows you to update your BIOS, erase your storage devices, and create profiles.

Accessories and Packaging

Dark Hero’s packaging has been updated to a darker color scheme. The motherboard comes with reading materials. A user handbook, a sticker sheet, and a driver CD are included. The Wi-Fi antenna, SATA connections, and RGB extensions are all included in the package.

CPUz Bench

CPUz Bench has been included in our reviews as an essential system tuning bench. With our 5800X, we can get 665 single threads and 6667 multithread for the Dark Hero.

Cinebench

Cinebench is a long-running render test that Intel and AMD have used to demonstrate their newest systems at launch events. The benchmark includes two tests: a single-core task with one thread (1T) and a multi-core workload with multiple threads (2T). A multi-threaded test also employs all of a CPU’s threads, or nT.

RealBench

Realbench benchmarks your CPU using both video and picture workloads. In this scenario, we employ a Heavy Multitasking workload. The Dark Hero completed this task in 31.1 seconds.

Memory for AIDA64

AIDA64 has remained our go-to tool for measuring memory bandwidth. The Dark Hero is on par with ASRock’s Hero and Taichi in terms of performance.

Networking with iPerf

On the Dark Hero, both wired and wireless speed was excellent. The AX200 had a peak throughput of 1412Mbps in wired testing, whereas the AX200 had a high throughput of 2351Mbps.

Power Consumption

The DH’s system power usage was idle at 157 watts. The CPU load reached 375 watts, while gaming used 630 watts.

Overclocking

After putting our Ryzen 7 5800X through its paces on various motherboards, I’ve concluded that it won’t go faster than 4.7GHz without sub-ambient cooling and a significant increase in voltage.

Thermals

Idle temperatures on our 5800X under stock settings were 29°C, consistent with previous X570 platforms. CoreTemp recorded a peak load temperature of 75°C.

Our thermal scan of the VRM reveals a significant amount of heat accumulation across the chipset region, with a peak temperature of 39 degrees Celsius. VRM maintains a pleasant temperature in the mid-thirties.

Overview of CPU Overclocking Performance

We’re utilizing an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X processor and two distinct X570 chipset motherboards for the CPU overclocking test: the MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE and the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero.

The test begins with the CPU parameters set to default in order to see whether there is any change in boost performance. Our Ryzen 7 5800X surged to 4.75GHz on specified cores on the MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE during load. 

It’s adequate, although the performance seems to be significantly higher when installed on the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero, which boosts core speeds up to 4.85GHz under load.

Ryzen 7 5800X has a maximum frequency of 4.7GHz, the same on both boards. Beyond that, we’ll need more Vcore, and we’ll wind up with an average load temperature of 90oC, which I’m not comfortable with. However, there was a slight variance in the Vcore necessary for the Ryzen 7 5800X to sustain 4.7GHz without showing any symptoms of instability. 

ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero needs a Vcore of 1.262V to ensure our ROG Realbench stability test, while the MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE requires a slightly lower Vcore of 1.256V.

Overview of Memory Overclocking Performance

Moving on to memory overclocking, we’re utilizing a variety of RAM kits to compare the timings and voltages necessary to attain a given speed to see how well this board can do. 

Due to the quality of our Ryzen 7 5800X, we weren’t able to go too high with the memory frequency this time. Still, we managed to achieve some good results to explain if the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero is just as excellent for memory overclocking.

Asus Rog Crosshair VIII Dark Hero Technical Specifications:

RAM	DDR4
Wireless Type	Bluetooth, 5 GHz Radio Frequency, 802.11ax, 2.4 GHz Radio Frequency
Item model number	ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero
Item Weight	4.25 pounds
Product Dimensions	14.57 x 12.28 x 4.25 inches
Item Dimensions LxWxH	14.57 x 12.28 x 4.25 inches
Color	ROG; ROG gaming; Asus ROG motherboard; ROG Z590
Manufacturer	Asus
ASIN	B08MTKJ6HM
Country of Origin	China

Frequently Asked Questions:

Final Verdict:

In this article, we have reviewed Asus rog crosshair VIII dark hero. Dark Hero is a beautiful board, and based on what we’ve learned from the original Hero, it’s likely to be a solid performer in the future.

 In a similar vein, we anticipate solid sales for ASUS’ Dark Hero, which is well deserved given ASUS’ attention in providing several enhancements to this platform, including a beefed-up VRM.

Customers who currently own the original Hero will likely find little benefit from the Dark Hero, although ASUS does tempt with features like Dynamic OC Switcher. Because ASUS claims it requires extra circuitry that only this new board possesses, this is a Dark Hero-only feature. This feature, in my opinion, is one of the greatest on this board since it avoids the adverse effects of running high all-core overclocks.