Review on Asus ROG X570 Crosshair VIII Impact SFF Gaming Motherboard – AMD AM4 Ryzen 3000, PCIe 4.0, WiFi 6, Intel LAN, SATA 6GB/s, USB 3.2 Gen 2, SO-DIMM.2, Aura Sync by Josh Ulrich

I bought this board ten months ago and used it for about two months before I got frustrated with it and ASUS. Sent it back once after it walled itself in and they reflashed it and sent it back minus some stuff I sent along. I've been using it for a little longer and after updating to the latest firmware available, tried to overclock the memory again. I blocked myself right away. By this point I had modified it to the point where going back again would be too much of a hassle to mess around with. Replaced it with an MSI board that was a quarter the cost. Pros: - Reliable power supply and VRM cooling. - USB-C connector. - Show POST code. - Two M.2 4.0 slots. - Hard as a board. which means two potentially loud failure points. A common problem with X570 boards, which is silly since we passively cooled 3x TDP chipsets ten years ago. Hard to forgive on an SFF board. - A non-removable BIOS ROM chip. - Spontaneously erases its ROM chip when trying to POST from a particularly bad OC memory or when digging too deep into AGESA settings. - A BIOS flashback feature that should make the second ROM chip redundant Doesn't work with badly corrupted firmware. - Displaying a zip code often returns zip codes that are not listed or listed as "reserved". It's useless. The single-sided memory retention clips make it nearly impossible to remove DIMMs without "buckling" them at an angle. And this is the cooler. Didn't cause any problems but still a concern given the presence of fans. The CMOS battery is hidden under the heatsink and taped to the side of the I/O connectors. It's also shrink-wrapped, with the terminals connected to the motherboard with two wires and a tiny connector. This makes the exchange much more difficult than it should be. The battery was also half empty (2.95v. 3.3v is ok for a full charge) out of the box. - The thermal pad connected the SOC VRM to the motherboard backplate with little to no contact. - The M.2 adapter with the heatsink installed is very heavy and will almost certainly crack or damage the SO-DIMM slot it is in if the system is roughly handled. M.2 heatsinks warp the M.2 riser and install M.2 drives when secured. Lessons Learned: You always get what you pay for.