ASUS today introduced its first ROG Strix-H branded AMD platform motherboard. ASUS differentiates its ROG Strix line of motherboards with brand extensions resembling their main ROG brands, with E denoting “extreme,” F denoting “formula,” G denoting “gene” (microATX), I denoting “impact” (Mini-ITX), A denoting “apex,” and H denoting “hero.” The H extension is positioned below F, just like Hero is positioned below Formula; however ROG Strix-H motherboard SKUs tend to be rare as that price-point tends to be occupied by TUF Gaming Plus SKUs. The new ROG Strix X870-H Gaming WiFi7 S is exclusive to China, and comes co-branded. The board pulls power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and dual 8-pin EPS connectors, using a 16+2+1 phase VRM, which uses 80 A DrMOS on all phases. The board uses an 8-layer PCB.
The board is based on the AMD X870 chipset, which ensures USB4 connectivity, besides some premium networking features such as Wi-Fi 7. The AMD Socket AM5 is wired to four DDR5 DIMM slots, a PCI-Express 5.0 x16 slot, and two M.2 Gen 5 NVMe slots—the second slot shares its Gen 5 x4 lanes with the PEG slot. There are two additional Gen 4 NVMe slots, one of these is wired to the X870 FCH, while the other shares its lanes with the CPU-attached discrete USB4 host controller. The topmost Gen 5 NVMe slot comes with a tall heatsink, while the other three slots come with a flatter common heatsink-shroud.
Network connectivity includes Wi-Fi 7 from a MediaTek-sourced WLAN controller; and 2.5 GbE from a Realtek controller. USB connectivity includes two 40 Gbps USB4 ports with DisplayPort passthrough, two additional 20 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 type-C ports (one on the rear I/O, one via header), four 5 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 1 on the rear I/O and four additional ones via headers; two 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 type-A, and two USB 2.0. The onboard audio solution uses a Realtek ALC1220P CODEC with Savitech SC3H712 amp and Dolby Atmos support. Other features include a graphics card easy-release lever.
