Our newsfeeds have been dominated by one word over the past few weeks, and that word is “tariff”. President Trump’s favourite word, apparently. His administration’s international trade policies have thrown markets the world over into something of a loop. Still, even among all this pricing turmoil, there’s really no excuse for a $1,371 motherboard, is there?
As reported by Benchlife , that’s the dollar equivalent price for the Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Extreme AM5 motherboard. It’s suggested retail price in China is said to be RMB 9,999, which works out to some $1,371 at the time of writing.
So what do you get for all that cash? Well, to be fair, a serious slab of electronics. The AM5 socket mobo supports up to 256 GB of 9000 MT/s DDR5 across four DIMM slots, up to five M.2 drives, four USB-C ports, and WiFi 7.
Plus you get two PCIe 5.0 slots with Q-Release Slim mechanisms (both of which look to be the updated version of the socket after a kerfuffle over potential GPU damage from the previous version earlier this year) and what Asus calls an Extreme OC kit—with a host of extra buttons, modes and component upgrades to facilitate mega CPU clocks.
That’s quite the impressive specs sheet, and worthy of the Extreme moniker. As is the price, which is truly monstrous.
Of course, components are priced differently for different markets—and given the yo-yo-like nature of the current US tariff situation , it’s entirely possible the suggested price may change over the coming weeks, or even minutes at this rate.
Should the price stick around, however, or work out to the equivalent when it eventually reaches western shores, it would easily be the most expensive consumer-grade AM5 motherboard we’ve seen to date.
That’s for a component that many system builders choose to overlook when pricing out a new build. Still, given the high-speed memory support and the wealth of overclocking-friendly components, this motherboard seems destined for the enthusiasts market no matter what price it eventually ends up receiving.
I’d class myself as something of an enthusiast, but I would absolutely baulk at spending that sort of figure on a motherboard, of all things. Still, I’m not an extreme digit-chasing overclocker, and by the looks of it this mobo is built for those who desire the very tippity-top in AM5 motherboard tech.
So, if that’s you, it looks like you’re going to need some deep pockets if you plan on picking up one of these in the near future. I’d rather drop that sort of cash on a GPU, if I really had to—but you do you, my overclocking friends.
