Packaging and Accessories
The box for the Crosshair VIII Hero WiFI kind of fits with the style that Asus has been going with recently with the black and dark grey. They accent that with the ROG red along the bottom, on the ROG logo in the top right, and a red glow that goes in between the black and grey sections. In the background of the black, they have a line drawing that you can barely see and the grey has a brushed aluminum look. The model name is in huge letters across the front and they used a reflective hologram like finish on that that really stands out. Then down along the bottom, there are a few of the required logos for things like the Ryzen logo, one that shows the socket and chipset, Crossfire and SLI support, PCIe 4, etc. There is also one that shows that the board has Asus Aura lighting support.
Around on the back, the model name is up on top in that same reflective finish again with the ROG logo in red next to it. Asus has photos of the board here with a large on in the center from two angles that show the top and the rear I/O together. On both sides of that photo, they have a big specification listing which is really cool. Then above that, there are four photos that highlight a few features like the number of VRMs, PCIe 4, the WIFI and dual LANs, and Optimem III.
The box opens up a little differently than a lot of motherboard boxes, Asus features the board a little with the clear plastic tray over the board so you can see it as soon as you open it up and the ROG logo on the underside of the top.
Inside all of the accessories and documentation is up under the tray that holds the motherboard. In normal Asus fashion, they didn’t skimp too much on accessories. So you get a user guide for the motherboard along with a full page sticker sheet. The stickers include a few cable labels should you need them and a bunch of different ROG sticks, all with a metallic like finish. They toss in a round ROG coaster and a small paper with the ROG social media accounts on it. There is a driver/software disk and also a paper with a coupon code for CableMod. I’ve included our paper code showing to share the love, feel free to use it!
For accessories Asus has everything tucked away in its own clear bag. You get four black SATA cables. Then to two other cables are both for RGB lighting. One is an extension cable for the normal 4-pin RGB header and the other is for addressable RGB lighting. There is a tiny bag with a small Q Connect connector that you can use to make hooking up the front panel connection easier and then a small bag with all of the standoffs and screws for M.2 drives.
Lastly, Asus includes one wireless antenna with the Hero WiFi model. The antenna design is the same as Asus has used for the last few generations of boards with a shark fin styling. It comes with a base to hold it up, I’ve already got that attached in the photo. It is also magnetized as well to stick it on your case.
