ASUS Crosshair VII Hero AM4 Motherboard Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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ASUS Crosshair VII Hero AM4 Motherboard Review

Along with the second generation AMD Ryzen CPUs, we are getting new and somewhat improved X470 chipset motherboards. We have been beating on the Crosshair VII Hero for about a month now and have figured out what we like about, outside of it being an excellent overclocker for the Ryzen 7 CPUs.

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I've been enjoying using this board so it's nice to see it get a gold award but I have a question.

In the memory benchmarks section the test systems section lists the memory speed for all systems at 3400MHz but the memory benchmark graphs show 3400MHz for the C7H board, 3200MHz for the other x470 boards, and 3600MHz for the Intel system. My question is if 3400MHz is just the rated speed for the kits and if not which is correct?
 
Great review as always, nice seeing it took only one board to make it to the end this time :D. ASUS is a great company, they kept supporting and improving the CH6 and now came out with probably the best in it's class CH7 board. Makes me want to ditch the CH6 but I think I will see what TR2 has coming later this year.
 
Ebernanut said:
I've been enjoying using this board so it's nice to see it get a gold award but I have a question.

In the memory benchmarks section the test systems section lists the memory speed for all systems at 3400MHz but the memory benchmark graphs show 3400MHz for the C7H board, 3200MHz for the other x470 boards, and 3600MHz for the Intel system. My question is if 3400MHz is just the rated speed for the kits and if not which is correct?
Click to expand...
3200 was the fastest we could get the majority of the X370 boards to run, so we went with 3200 across the board for benchmarks. All the X470 have done 3400 without issue, so we standardized on 3400. 3600 on the Intel boards....
 
Hey Kyle,

Just curious is the CPU or the motherboard that would limit the max memory speed? I would assume it is the CPU? I plan to build a Ryzen system next week (that ebay 2700 ryzen is a steal), and I might just get some low cl14 3200 memory over 3400-3600 memory.
 
Thank you for an excellent review. I own one and have to agree with everything you said about it.

That said, I've had two really strange quirks with this board in my new rig (see sig below for specs) and both have been solved to the best of my knowledge and experience so far:

1. When I received the board from Newegg, it had BIOS 0401. I immediately flashed it to 0601 that I got from [H] in Kyle's launch article, before it was generally available on ASUS's website. (Again, thank you Kyle for posting that.)
I then went into the BIOS and pressed F5 to "reset" everything and F10ed to save and rebooted.
Then I went back into the BIOS and set the D.O.C.P. memory profile to get the memory to run at 3200 speed. F10ed to save and rebooted back into BIOS.
The memory speed was still running at 2400 and DRAM voltage was reading 1.2000V even though the BIOS setting was specifically set to 1.3500V and D.O.C.P. mode was enabled and the DRAM speed was set to 3200.
No matter what I did, including altering BIOS settings, powering down, unplugging the PSU power from the wall, etc., I could not get the BIOS to pay attention to the 1.3500V setting. It simply ignored the voltage setting. Without the higher voltage I could not exceed something like 2866 MHz before it would not boot.
After posting my troubles on the forums here, some people gave some suggestions and I remembered that this board has the Clear CMOS button on the back panel.
So I shut off the system and pressed the Clear CMOS button and then booted it back up.
I set D.O.C.P. mode again and F10ed and rebooted into the BIOS.
Sure enough, this time the memory was at 3200MHz and 1.3500V just as it was supposed to be.
Really weird problem. But I've learned now that I should press the Clear CMOS button after flashing to a new BIOS version. Pressing F5 inside the BIOS is NOT the same thing.
I think this was a simple case of UEFI weirdness related to the flashing from 0401 to 0601. I think some internal (hidden) registers/variables were not being set correctly after the flash, resulting in settings being ignored and F5 did not touch those.
Good thing that Clear CMOS button exists. Otherwise the board was going to be RMAed and I was not looking forward to that.
​
2. The Seasonic Prime Ultra Titanium 850 (SSR-850TR) that I originally chose to use with this system would end up shutting off the computer when running the internal benchmark in Ghost Recon Wildlands (all settings Ultra where possible, motion blur off). No other game or benchmark program I tried (which wasn't many, I admit) did this, even ones that had a higher average power draw from the wall.
While not specifically an issue with this motherboard, per se (I have not and will likely not ever test with another motherboard), I think the transient power fluctuations were triggering the OCP in the PSU.
I made a thread about it here: https://hardforum.com/threads/sudden-total-power-off-in-game-menu.1961373/#post-1043652515
The solution was to upgrade to the Seasonic Prime Ultra Titanium 1000 (SSR-1000TR). The shutdowns stopped, presumably because the SSR-1000TR has a higher OCP threshold that my system does not exceed.
Some of the guys over at jonnyguru think the OCP circuitry is has a lower trigger threshold in the Prime Ultra Titanium series. Their thread: http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15653
​
I only mention these problems that I experienced here to try to help others that may experience similar issues in the future, not to "trash" the manufacturers of the products I used.
 
I had a Crosshair board for my old FX-9590 and would have loved to have one for Ryzen as well but just couldn't fit it in budget wise. Sexy board though.
 
Azrak said:
Thank you for an excellent review. I own one and have to agree with everything you said about it.

That said, I've had two really strange quirks with this board in my new rig (see sig below for specs) and both have been solved to the best of my knowledge and experience so far:

1. When I received the board from Newegg, it had BIOS 0401. I immediately flashed it to 0601 that I got from [H] in Kyle's launch article, before it was generally available on ASUS's website. (Again, thank you Kyle for posting that.)
I then went into the BIOS and pressed F5 to "reset" everything and F10ed to save and rebooted.
Then I went back into the BIOS and set the D.O.C.P. memory profile to get the memory to run at 3200 speed. F10ed to save and rebooted back into BIOS.
The memory speed was still running at 2400 and DRAM voltage was reading 1.2000V even though the BIOS setting was specifically set to 1.3500V and D.O.C.P. mode was enabled and the DRAM speed was set to 3200.
No matter what I did, including altering BIOS settings, powering down, unplugging the PSU power from the wall, etc., I could not get the BIOS to pay attention to the 1.3500V setting. It simply ignored the voltage setting. Without the higher voltage I could not exceed something like 2866 MHz before it would not boot.
After posting my troubles on the forums here, some people gave some suggestions and I remembered that this board has the Clear CMOS button on the back panel.
So I shut off the system and pressed the Clear CMOS button and then booted it back up.
I set D.O.C.P. mode again and F10ed and rebooted into the BIOS.
Sure enough, this time the memory was at 3200MHz and 1.3500V just as it was supposed to be.
Really weird problem. But I've learned now that I should press the Clear CMOS button after flashing to a new BIOS version. Pressing F5 inside the BIOS is NOT the same thing.
I think this was a simple case of UEFI weirdness related to the flashing from 0401 to 0601. I think some internal (hidden) registers/variables were not being set correctly after the flash, resulting in settings being ignored and F5 did not touch those.
Good thing that Clear CMOS button exists. Otherwise the board was going to be RMAed and I was not looking forward to that.
​
2. The Seasonic Prime Ultra Titanium 850 (SSR-850TR) that I originally chose to use with this system would end up shutting off the computer when running the internal benchmark in Ghost Recon Wildlands (all settings Ultra where possible, motion blur off). No other game or benchmark program I tried (which wasn't many, I admit) did this, even ones that had a higher average power draw from the wall.
While not specifically an issue with this motherboard, per se (I have not and will likely not ever test with another motherboard), I think the transient power fluctuations were triggering the OCP in the PSU.
I made a thread about it here: https://hardforum.com/threads/sudden-total-power-off-in-game-menu.1961373/#post-1043652515
The solution was to upgrade to the Seasonic Prime Ultra Titanium 1000 (SSR-1000TR). The shutdowns stopped, presumably because the SSR-1000TR has a higher OCP threshold that my system does not exceed.
Some of the guys over at jonnyguru think the OCP circuitry is has a lower trigger threshold in the Prime Ultra Titanium series. Their thread: http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15653
​
I only mention these problems that I experienced here to try to help others that may experience similar issues in the future, not to "trash" the manufacturers of the products I used.
Click to expand...
IIRC its F6 to reset to optimized defaults. That said, I have seen on some of these AM4 boards when it came to flashing the UEFI, that I needed to power those fully down, PSU turned off, to clear ALL UEFI settings. If you are getting weirdness, power it down fully, no PSU, and see where it goes from there. I did not have that on the CH6 however.
 
thank you for the review/overview Kyle and crew cheers o7

does this one still have ability to use AM3/3+ HSF as well as AM4 or only AM4 like all other boards ?
(just curious, I personally think all the vendors should have done this instead of fighting to get a bracket from your cpu cooler maker) ^.^

was quite tempted by this (or previous Hero VI) the ASUS ROG Strix X470-F, Prime Pro x470, or MSI Gaming Pro Carbon x370/x470 (or gaming plus x470) motherboards, I picked these ones because they all have similar specs (on paper) as far as feature set, audio and so forth (pricing ranges from ~$181 to ~$355 (plus HST) for the 2 MSI (x470) or 3 (Asus x470) models (lowest cost being the MSI x470 Gaming Plus $181 and the highest is Hero VII at $355..quick price check via amazon.ca)

Absolutely want to make sure to get "the best for the $ spent", really do not need laser light show RGB crud, just need it "to work, and work well" ^.^

(when budget allows me to build a new system have been hankering for and saving up for over the last 3 years)

sucks when GPU and RAM pricing is all over the place, would like a new Ryzen system top to bottom (Radeon of course) but over $3k to "do it right" is a very tough pill to swallow (yay Canada pricing) lol.

If anything, at least SSD are coming down in price and going up in capacity since I bought my 2 (MX100 and MX200) around 2-3.5 years ago (something like that)

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Have used ASUS for motherboards for nearly every computer I have ever built, many for friends builds (they have never done me any wrong)
Mostly used MSI for GPU however (or at least qual to the amount of ASUS ones I have owned)

I "prefer" ASUS and MSI mostly because they have RMA centers within this country so turn around time and cost is nice and quick (which is always a nice thing to have)

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This uses an EPS 8 pin and 4 pin for cpu power correct? (not need to use the 4 pin however?) I almost do not see the need of them strapping boat loads of potential power that can be fed to the cpu when they simply cannot use it (driving up cost for nothing) just my opinion of course.
 
Azrak said:
The Seasonic Prime Ultra Titanium 850 (SSR-850TR) that I originally chose to use with this system would end up shutting off the computer when running the internal benchmark in Ghost Recon Wildlands (all settings Ultra where possible, motion blur off). No other game or benchmark program I tried (which wasn't many, I admit) did this, even ones that had a higher average power draw from the wall.
Click to expand...

Gotta ask, what was your power draw at the wall? Theoretically, you should be able to power your system with 750w, with 850w being a safety margin. If the 850w unit was shutting down under any reasonable load, then the unit is most likely defective. Obviously going to 1000w isn't going to hurt, of course.
 
Brackle said:
Just curious is the CPU or the motherboard that would limit the max memory speed? I would assume it is the CPU? I plan to build a Ryzen system next week (that ebay 2700 ryzen is a steal), and I might just get some low cl14 3200 memory over 3400-3600 memory.
Click to expand...

It's mainly the processor since the IMC is integrated. From what I've seen though, this board does have some kinda juju going for it that'll hit higher memory speeds than a few competitors.

As far as memory goes, I'd recommend picking up at least a 3400mhz kit. I got a Trident Z 3600 cl15 kit and I don't know if I lucked out and got a golden chip/imc (It's looking more and more like I did), but this board and a 2700x WILL handle 3600mhz ram at cl15. Just download Ryzen DRAM calculator and feed it all the pertinent info, and it'll spit out a full set of timings and settings that SHOULD work.

I've managed to get it playing nice at 3600 cl15 and 3533 cl14 with the processor running PB lvl 3 under a 240mm AIO. TLDR; 3600MHZ RAM, 4.1ghz all core and 4.3ghz 2,1 core boosts with a little fiddling.
 
Just notice, shouldn't this review discussion be in the AMD Motherboard section with the other x470 boards?
 
I bought the wifi version of this, it was a total disaster. Nothing worked right, I updated the BIOS once to try and see if that would help and then sent it back.

- RGB function was broken out of the box, always stuck in color cycle no matter what
- Bluetooth wouldn't shut off
- Completely unable to OC memory at all, with the same kit and 2700X that does 3600mhz easily on two different X370 boards
- One of the m.2 slots was completely dead

I decided not to try my luck on another one.
 
Sounds like a lemon. Not the first time someone's got a bad unit from any brand/manufacturer.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
Gotta ask, what was your power draw at the wall? Theoretically, you should be able to power your system with 750w, with 850w being a safety margin. If the 850w unit was shutting down under any reasonable load, then the unit is most likely defective. Obviously going to 1000w isn't going to hurt, of course.
Click to expand...
I mentioned it in my thread about the issue (I encourage you to read it if you haven't), but the game power draw was around 650W at the wall. Yet 3DMark would reach ~750W at the wall and the system never shut down while running it. I concluded that the problem had nothing to do with average power draw and everything to do with transient power load fluctuations.
 
Thanks for this review. I jumped and got one of these boards before even seeing any reviews. My experience has been very good. The build, install, and tuning went well. The only issue I have had is when messing with the fan settings in AI Suite 3 where the system freezes and I need to do a hard restart. I have seen this issue cropping up in some of the forums so hopefully ASUS will address it with a bios or software update. I also went with an AIO cooler just to keep things quieter and cooler. Overall - super happy with this board.
 
twzTechman said:
Thanks for this review. I jumped and got one of these boards before even seeing any reviews. My experience has been very good. The build, install, and tuning went well. The only issue I have had is when messing with the fan settings in AI Suite 3 where the system freezes and I need to do a hard restart. I have seen this issue cropping up in some of the forums so hopefully ASUS will address it with a bios or software update. I also went with an AIO cooler just to keep things quieter and cooler. Overall - super happy with this board.
Click to expand...
Have you tried cycling the Power Options in Windows a few times and see if that "fixes" the issue.There is a Windows bug that we have come across that will cause some hard locks. This has been reported to Microsoft by the board builders.
 
twzTechman said:
Thanks for this review. I jumped and got one of these boards before even seeing any reviews. My experience has been very good. The build, install, and tuning went well. The only issue I have had is when messing with the fan settings in AI Suite 3 where the system freezes and I need to do a hard restart. I have seen this issue cropping up in some of the forums so hopefully ASUS will address it with a bios or software update. I also went with an AIO cooler just to keep things quieter and cooler. Overall - super happy with this board.
Click to expand...

My experience has been pretty good as well. The only thing I have noticed is when I trying to tune my RAM timings and seeing if I could get some performance increase with an overclock my UEFI BIOS would become super sluggish then freeze. It doesn't happen all the time but it would happen intermittently and was super annoying.
 
Nobody ever really addresses this question: Does it even make sense (for most enthusiasts) to overclock Ryzen, and especially Ryzen 2? Doesn't an OC shut off all the precision boost / turbo stuff? And don't those features give you more performance per watt than a straight OC?

I understand that an all-core OC will beat the stock product in benchmarks, but I'm talking about the smartest thing for 24/7 especially if you care about power consumption / room heat. It appears that Ryzen 2, especially, will perform imperceptibly different at stock clocks than with any OC, and at much less power.

True? Not true? Missing something?
 
Crystoff said:
Nobody ever really addresses this question: Does it even make sense (for most enthusiasts) to overclock Ryzen, and especially Ryzen 2? Doesn't an OC shut off all the precision boost / turbo stuff? And don't those features give you more performance per watt than a straight OC?

I understand that an all-core OC will beat the stock product in benchmarks, but I'm talking about the smartest thing for 24/7 especially if you care about power consumption / room heat. It appears that Ryzen 2, especially, will perform imperceptibly different at stock clocks than with any OC, and at much less power.

True? Not true? Missing something?
Click to expand...
It depends. For instance, the 2700 performed worse in multicore workloads that utilized all threads well when simply relying on pb2, but was nearly identical to the 2700x when oc'd manually. The 2700x performed slightly better when relying on pb2 than when oc'd manually at least half the time, except in highly thread optimized workloads.
Edit: Link for comparison.
 
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Interesting storage configuration on this board. Both NVME slots are PCI-E 3.0 x4. When the second M.2 socket is populated, it will steal 4 lanes from PCI-E 3.0 slots. You end up with x8/x4, plus x4 for the NVME M.2 socket.
 
lucidrenegade said:
Interesting storage configuration on this board. Both NVME slots are PCI-E 3.0 x4. When the second M.2 socket is populated, it will steal 4 lanes from PCI-E 3.0 slots. You end up with x8/x4, plus x4 for the NVME M.2 socket.
Click to expand...
You can't configure it to use x2/x2? For single GPU card users this maybe OK but for us dual card users that kinda sucks.
 
noko said:
You can't configure it to use x2/x2? For single GPU card users this maybe OK but for us dual card users that kinda sucks.
Click to expand...

No, the only option you have that enables the second M.2 slot sets the 2 main PCIe slots to X8/X4 mode. The BIOS setting for the second M.2 has an option to set the second PCIe slot to an X4/X4 mode for a PCIe raid card but that still leaves the second M.2 disabled.

IMO it's the biggest issue with the board and really all x470 boards since they all seem to do something screwy to get a second M.2 slot enabled. One board I looked at made you disable the bottom PCIe slot to enable the second M.2 but that also meant it was only PCIe 2.0 lanes, another disabled some SATA ports which also meant it didn't support NVME.

My ideal solution short of another 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes would be to disable or if possible borrow 4 lanes from the second PCIe slot to enable the second M.2 but none of the boards I looked at offered that.
 
Crystoff said:
Nobody ever really addresses this question: Does it even make sense (for most enthusiasts) to overclock Ryzen, and especially Ryzen 2? Doesn't an OC shut off all the precision boost / turbo stuff? And don't those features give you more performance per watt than a straight OC?

I understand that an all-core OC will beat the stock product in benchmarks, but I'm talking about the smartest thing for 24/7 especially if you care about power consumption / room heat. It appears that Ryzen 2, especially, will perform imperceptibly different at stock clocks than with any OC, and at much less power.

True? Not true? Missing something?
Click to expand...

So now I'm a nobody? ;)

AMD Precision Boost 2 and Wraith Prism Deep Dive
 
Wanted to say thank you for this review, and the overclocking review of the non 2700 Ryzen (and that badass ebay link). I now have this mobo and the 2700 ordered and on the way!. You saved me a great deal of money after that 2700 review. Once I get paid again, I will be sending money via Patreon!
 
Ebernanut said:
No, the only option you have that enables the second M.2 slot sets the 2 main PCIe slots to X8/X4 mode. The BIOS setting for the second M.2 has an option to set the second PCIe slot to an X4/X4 mode for a PCIe raid card but that still leaves the second M.2 disabled.

IMO it's the biggest issue with the board and really all x470 boards since they all seem to do something screwy to get a second M.2 slot enabled. One board I looked at made you disable the bottom PCIe slot to enable the second M.2 but that also meant it was only PCIe 2.0 lanes, another disabled some SATA ports which also meant it didn't support NVME.

My ideal solution short of another 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes would be to disable or if possible borrow 4 lanes from the second PCIe slot to enable the second M.2 but none of the boards I looked at offered that.
Click to expand...

For as long as PCI-E 3.0 has been around, I'm shocked AMD stuck with PCI-E 2.0 on their chipsets. Even the x399 is stuck with it, though it's not as big of a deal due to the large number of 3.0 lanes on the Threadripper CPU itself. I guess they figured no-one would want more than one NVME drive?!?
 
lucidrenegade said:
For as long as PCI-E 3.0 has been around, I'm shocked AMD stuck with PCI-E 2.0 on their chipsets. Even the x399 is stuck with it, though it's not as big of a deal due to the large number of 3.0 lanes on the Threadripper CPU itself. I guess they figured no-one would want more than one NVME drive?!?
Click to expand...

I myself plan to use 2. You wont see hardly any GPU performance difference from 16x to 8x PCI-E 3.0. And besides, A lot of people so with single GPU's nowadays...but I can see someone who does go xfire of SLI have an issue with the lanes and using 2 NVME drives.
 
Nice review and good to see that the AM4 board problems of old have been resolved. It would have also been nice to see a 370 chipset board in the review for a performance comparison between the two generations of chipset.
 
I picked one of these up the other day. Just waiting on my processor.
 
Brackle said:
Yea same here. Newegg on Ebay is saying my 2700 will be here Monday....damn you Newegg!
Click to expand...
Newegg Ebay said I was going to receive the 2700 last Friday, I got it last Wednesday so two days early. CPU kicks ass and for the 2700, traditional OCing is the way to go. 1.34v when loaded at 4.1 ghz all cores and Prime95 stable for 5 hours is looking very good so far. Don't know the upper limit yet. CH7 has to be a perfect board for the 2700 due to the utterly awesome set of options to OC with. Also PState voltage settings now work which gives some very unique configuration options with profiles.
 
Good review guys, thanks!

Board is a little pricey for my blood. I tend to top out at $150 or less nowadays. $279 for the non-wifi version is a little ouchy.
 
Myself I love Gigabyte boards, gave up on ASUS a long time ago, that said the Gigabyte x470 Gaming 7 was OK, but I expected better voltage control.. Sent it back and got this board and I am really amazed at how different this is over the Gigabyte boards, the voltages seem to be pretty close to actual and I can gut much more out of my ram than on the Gigabyte.
Great review as always.
 
Thanks for the [H] quality review guys! Ironically my middle wage Derf rig (which has been the wife's rig for a few years now as I've been using a gaming laptop for travel reasons) has been giving me some real hell.

Black screens followed by fans in high. Monitored temps of the CPU and GPU while playing Black Desert on High End settings which gives the Geforce 1070 a good push and the issue hasn't been temp related. Just replaced the PSU with a 850 Watt Corsair and the issue has persisted.

Long story short I believe it's either the card or the motherboard. I was intending to upgrade her system with Zen2 next year, but instead on Friday I am stopping by Microcenter on my way to work to pick up all the parts for a 2700X system build.

The motherboard has been the one piece of the puzzle that I find perplexing to make a good call on.

Until now at least, as I have always favored the time and attention to detail that ya'll put into your [H] reviews. I still have one small question, now I know it wasn't included in the charts for the review so I doubt you guys have had the chance to test it, but do you think I'd be passing up on a reasonable level of quality by saving $80 and getting the Asus ROG Strix X470-F Gaming instead?
 
noko said:
Newegg Ebay said I was going to receive the 2700 last Friday, I got it last Wednesday so two days early. CPU kicks ass and for the 2700, traditional OCing is the way to go. 1.34v when loaded at 4.1 ghz all cores and Prime95 stable for 5 hours is looking very good so far. Don't know the upper limit yet. CH7 has to be a perfect board for the 2700 due to the utterly awesome set of options to OC with. Also PState voltage settings now work which gives some very unique configuration options with profiles.
Click to expand...

I got mine Wednesday too.

1.34v for 4.1.... I can't get past 4.0 at 1.4v on mine. 4.1 doesn't even apply and test in Ryzen Master at 1.34V. I need 1.4V for Ryzen Master to apply and test 4.1, and 1.45V just to run Cinebench, but it overheats quickly and crashes on my H110.

This is on the CH6 though.
 
Derfman said:
I still have one small question, now I know it wasn't included in the charts for the review so I doubt you guys have had the chance to test it, but do you think I'd be passing up on a reasonable level of quality by saving $80 and getting the Asus ROG Strix X470-F Gaming instead?
Click to expand...
I would suggest that would be just fine, but we have not tested that board, so I can't say for sure. ASUS seemed to have gotten over all the AM4 hurdles though with with X470.
 
Derfman said:
Even though it's for the Mrs. I'm still extremely excited to get a Ryzen build put together. :D
Click to expand...

Always, always, always get your wife at least as good as or not better than your machine. Especially if you play games together and you frag her more than she frags you (oops, yeah, I did that).
 
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