ASUS Prime X670E-Pro WiFi Review | Conclusion | CPU & Mainboard

Conclusion

People who seek a new motherboard for their system usually fall into two distinct camps. Those who want the best, damn the expense, and those who understand that, features aside, most motherboards are the same and therefore whichever one fits in with your needs, budget and aesthetic choices is good enough.

The ASUS Prime X670E-Pro WiFi definitely finds itself in the latter of those two camps. Primarily (heh) because as part of the regular ASUS range instead of their famous Republic of Gamers brand, it is a motherboard shorn of those flashy considerations and with a price tag to match. We’ve seen loads of Prime motherboards in our time and they usually were the white model in the ASUS range, and so earned a place in the hearts of all those who had grown weary of a black PCB in the depths of their rig. This time around ASUS have, instead, moved the Prime from white to a light silvery colour. How much you can tolerate this is naturally a matter of personal preference, but we think it’s a bit of a misstep. Anyone who wants a white motherboard will be disappointed at how not white it is, and those who like the dark system with nothing but RGB lighting will find it too bright. The niche of people who neither want a white based system nor a black one is a sliver, particularly as all the accoutrements that make up a system are usually found in one of those two colours. There aren’t many silver fans or AIOs on the market for one thing.

But if you can get past the looks of the thing, the Prime is surprisingly capable, especially for the price. Without the need to put some seriously expensive power stages in to justify the ROG name, nor any of the expensive features we’ve all come to expect from a ROG motherboard, ASUS have put the budget into other areas. You get DDR5 that supports up to 6400 MHz. The M.2 slots contain one Gen5 slot, should you have a desire for the very fastest storage solutions. This PCI Express 5.0 tech is also found on the main slot too. There is one PCIe 4.0 slot too, but the one you’ll all stick your graphics card into is PCIe 5.0. Lovely.

It’s not like the 70A 14+2 teamed power stages aren’t able to keep up with the demand either, as our graphs clearly show. The Ryzen 9 7900X we used for testing was just as happy here on the Prime as it was on the Crosshair Hero or Strix X670E-F. Connectivity isn’t an issue either. Okay you have no rear USB 4 ports, but there are plenty of USB 3.2 ports and even the 20 Gbps 2×2 Type-C version for those who need the ultimate in USB 3.2 bandwidth. With WiFi 6E and a 2.5G LAN your networking pleasure isn’t dampened either, unless you’re rich enough to have a 10G home networking setup, which is as slender a target audience as the silver colour scheme we spoke about before.

The ASUS Prime X670E-Pro WiFi is all the AM5 motherboard you need, with none of the bits that you don’t, at a seriously attractive price point and thus wins our OC3D Gamers Choice.

£359.99

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