ASUS Prime X870-P review: is this entry-level AM5 motherboard worth a buy?
We test and benchmark the cheapest of the X870 chipset range from ASUS
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The ASUS Prime X870-P motherboard is one of a myriad of different options that have released with a chipset compatible with the latest Ryzen 9000 series processors. The idea behind the ASUS Prime series is to offer an entry-level option, without any of the bells and whistles of the more expensive SKUs (like the ASUS ROG Strix X870E-E for instance), however, this latest line does still come with new features to make building your PC more straightforward.
The ASUS Prime X870-P retails in the US for $249.99, which is the cheapest of the ASUS X870 and X870E range. Previous generation Prime entries however have ended up being a bit overpriced considering the stripped-back features you get, so they weren’t that well-regarded as a budget options. Let’s see if this latest gen model is any different!
- Socket: LGA 1718 (AM5)
- Chipset: X870
- Form Factor: ATX Form Factor; 12″ x 9.6″ / 30.5 x 24.4cm
- PCIe Version: 1x PCIe (x16) Gen 5, 3x PCIe Gen 4 (x16)
- Memory speed: Up to 8000 MT/s
- Memory capacity: 192GB DDR5
The ASUS Prime X870-P is a solid cheaper board with high power efficiency and greater USB connectivity than you’d typically expect at this price. Still, its design displays some questionable choices where some of the PCIe slots are covered-up and unusable when a graphics card is installed, and the fact it only comes with two SATA ports.
- High power delivery for a cheaper board
- Efficient power delivery for a cheaper board
- Good amount of USB connectivity for a non-E motherboard
- Easy detach GPU
- Some of the PCIe x16 slots are unusable when a medium-sized GPU is installed
- Only 2x SATA ports
- Lacks Clear CMOS button
Design & Aesthetics
In terms of looks the board is a combination of black (the PCB) and brushed silver (the heatsinks and thermal shielding); it could work quite well in a black, white, or silver case design. There is not much of a backplate on the reverse of the board other than the standard AM5 plate on the back area of the CPU. Unlike the more expensive ASUS boards, particularly the Strix X870-E series, there are no board lights or RGB to speak of.
In the box you get a WiFi connecting cable, a couple of SATA cables, and some screws for the NVMe drives. The included manual is very basic, though you can download a more comprehensive one from the website. Similarly, the box doesn’t have a great deal of information on it compared to the more premium motherboards.
Specifications
Listed below is full specs list of the ASUS Prime X870-P motherboard. Below this we’ve picked out some key points for discussion.
| Socket | LGA 1718 (AM5) |
| Chipset | X870 |
| Form Factor | ATX Form Factor; 12″ x 9.6″ / 30.5 x 24.4cm |
| RAM | 4 x DIMM slots, max. 192GB, DDR5 8000+MT/s(OC) |
| VRM | 14 + 2 + 1 power phase VRM solution |
| PCIe | 1 x PCIe 5.0 x16 slot 3 x PCIe 4.0 x16 slot |
| Storage | 4 x M.2 slots (Key M) 2 x SATA 6Gb/s ports |
| Fan Headers | 1 x 4-pin CPU Fan header 1 x 4-pin CPU OPT Fan header 1 x 4-pin AIO Pump header 4 x 4-pin Chassis Fan headers |
| Back panel Connectors | 2 x USB4 (40Gbps) ports (2 x USB Type-C) 1 x USB 10Gbps port (1 x Type-A) 3 x USB 5Gbps ports (3 x Type-A) 4 x USB 2.0 ports (4 x Type-A) 1 x HDMI port 1 x Wi-Fi module 1 x Realtek 2.5Gb Ethernet port 3 x Audio jacks 1 x BIOS FlashBack button |
| Other Internal I/O Connectors | 1 x USB 10Gbps connector (supports USB Type-C®) 1 x USB 5Gbps header supports 2 additional USB 5Gbps ports 2 x USB 2.0 headers support 4 additional USB 2.0 ports 1 x 24-pin Main Power connector 2 x 8-pin +12V CPU Power connectors 3 x Addressable Gen 2 headers 1 x Clear CMOS header 1 x COM Port header 1 x Front Panel Audio header (F_AUDIO) 1 x S/PDIF Out header 1 x SPI TPM header (14-1 pin) 1 x 10-1 pin System Panel header |
PCIe
The design choices regarding the PCIe slots of the ASUS Prime X870-P are quite puzzling. This is a budget-friendly motherboard but it has four PCIe x16 slots (one 5.0, the rest 4.0), which would seem to be a pretty good deal, except you can’t use one-to-two of these if you’re installing a graphics card any larger than, say an ancient GT 710 (we had one lying around so tried this ourselves). After installing the RTX 4070 Ti we were testing into the top PCIe x16 5.0 header, it completely covered the topmost PCIe Gen 4 slot, the M.2 slot below that (which isn’t a problem), and went close enough to the next PCIe Gen 4 slot that only the thinnest of cards could be installed in that socket.
For any gamers buying this board then, these sockets would appear to be completely redundant, and ASUS would have been better spending their resources upgrading other aspects of the board (converting the bottom PCIe x16 socket to Gen 5 as well for instance), or adding additional M.2 slots.
If you’re looking to put together a server or similar without powerful dedicated graphics, then the Prime X870-P might make more sense, similarly an audio editor not looking to break the bank on an expensive motherboard might find the myriad PCIe slots useful for sound cards, capture cards, and additional storage. Video editors will typically require a reasonably powerful GPU however so they’ll experience the same issue; ultimately for all of these use-cases, the second PCIe slot would have been better served as a dedicated M.2 socket instead.
SATA
SATA ports are limited to two, rather than the four you’d expect to see in most motherboards. As the trend moves towards M.2 slots for storage, we should expect to see less and less SATA ports included in newer motherboards going forward, however those who use a lot of storage and want to bring over their older SSDs might be a bit put off by this limitation, particularly given this is marketed as a more budget-friendly option where users are more likely to want to do this.
USB connectivity
Typically it’s the ‘E’ designated motherboards that come with a wide level of USB connectivity, the Prime though remains pretty impressive in this regard, despite being cheaper. The back I/O includes two 40Gbps USB4/USB-C ports (with 5V/3A power delivery) as well as a solid array of USB-A sockets (one 10GBps, three 5GBps, and four USB 2.0), and the support for the front of the case includes a USB-C (10GBps with 5V/3A power delivery) a 5GBps USB-A, and two more USB 2.0.
ASUS Prime X870-P performance & efficiency
So now we move onto the benchmarking! In our testing, we use an open-air test bench system with the specs listed below: the same for all the other motherboard reviews we conduct of the same chipset to ensure maximum consistency.
For the latest X870 & X870E chipsets, we used AMD’s latest Ryzen 9 9950X processor, paired with our standard Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti graphics card that we use for both Intel and AMD reviews. This setup will, in theory at least, easily handle any of the tests we throw at it.
Full test bench system
| Component | Name |
| GPU | RTX 4070 Ti Super |
| Memory | Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5 @ 6400MT/s |
| CPU | Ryzen 9 9950X |
| CPU cooler | Corsair H170i LCD XT |
| Power supply | ASUS ROG Thor 1000W |
| Case | Cooler Master Masterframe |
Synthetic benchmarks
We conducted our standard range of synthetic benchmarks, which consisted of the multicore tests for Cinebench R23, Cinebench R24, and Geekbench, as well as three tests within the Blender Suite. For the purpose of a motherboard test, the score itself isn’t the factor we’re really looking at, rather the difference between the power scores and the motherboard temperature, relative to the scores and CPU temp respectively (we’ll discuss this more below).
| Metric | Blender Suite | CB R23 (multi) | CB 2024 (multi) | Geekbench 6 (multi) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Score | Mon 261.39 SPM / Jnk 187.09 / Cls 131.80 | 38,856 points | 2,105 points | 21,166 points |
| PPT AVG W | 187.640W | 163.154W | 188.482W | 59.172W |
| AVG Package Power | 187.637W | 162.852W | 188.475W | 59.169W |
| CPU Temp (die) max | 71.3°C | 71.3°C | 71.7°C | 68.4°C |
| Max Mobo temp | 35°C | 35°C | 35°C | 35°C |
Gaming benchmarks
As is our standard, we tested 7 games in total (though had unrelated issues with Horizon Forbidden West, so have not included these results). These games have different demands, with some being more GPU-focused, some more CPU-heavy, and some in the middle, as well as just more or less demanding in general. This gives us a broad data sample to see how the board performs in different scenarios.
Once again, it’s not really the FPS data that is the focus here, more the differences between the other results.
| Score | CS2 | CP 2077 | Days Gone | Doom Eternal | Frost Punk 2 | SOTF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Framerate | AVG 221 FPS / 1% 134 | AVG 220 FPS / 1% 142 | AVG 327 FPS / 1% 176 | AVG 496 FPS / 1% 373 | AVG 210 FPS / 1% 150 | AVG 185 FPS / 1% 140 |
| PPT AVG W | 101.601W | 128.429W | 102.810W | 154.338W | 128.748W | 103.043W |
| AVG Package Power | 101.585W | 128.309W | 102.238W | 155.120W | 128.743W | 103.010W |
| CPU TEMP (Die) Max | 55.3°C | 66.7°C | 63.8°C | 62.6°C | 63.6°C | 57.1°C |
| Max Mobo temp | 34°C | 34°C | 34°C | 34°C | 33°C | 34°C |
Interpreting these results
Despite being a cheaper board, the power delivery (PPT AVG in the tables above) wasn’t much lower on average than the more high-end boards from Gigabyte and ASUS that we benchmarked on the same system. The efficiency of the board (the difference between the PPT AVG and the AVG Package Power) was also very good, with a very small Wattage difference between the two readings: typically we’d class anything above 2W difference with this size PPT Wattage as being less than ‘good’ but the differences were very negligible in both gaming and synthetic scenarios. This puts the cheaper Prime fairly in line with these other two motherboards, in efficiency terms as well, which is definitely a strong plus for this board.
Installation
All told, the motherboard installation process was pretty straightforward for the Prime X870-P. It doesn’t have the ‘EZ-latch’ release on the M.2 slots that some other X870/X870E boards do (like the Gigabyte AORUS x870E Pro Ice), but there is a nice quick release lever for the GPU, which makes one of the most fiddly and frustrating parts of upgrading your PC (trying to release the graphics card) an absolute doddle.
The general build quality seemed pretty solid for a cheaper board, and we didn’t notice any worrying bending or the like during the installation process.
CPUs that pair well with this motherboard
You can theoretically pair this board with any CPU in the Ryzen 7000 series or 9000 series, although if you’re splashing out on a Ryzen 9 SKU from either range we’d probably advise you spend a bit more more money on a more premium motherboard. Certainly, this motherboard isn’t that suitable for overclocking on these top-level CPUs.
Consequently, we’d advise pairing this board with Ryzen 7 processors from either range, although if you’re planning on overclocking these to a substantial level you might similarly want to look for an upgrade.
Verdict
The ASUS Prime X870-P is impressive in several ways, but puzzling in others, and whether its right for you ultimately depends on your needs. If affordable storage and/or overclocking is a priority you’re not planning on using the additional PCIe sockets, you may want to check out the GIGABYTE X870 GAMING X WIFI7 instead, which markets for the same price, but has four SATA (6Gb/s) ports and a 16+2+2 power design – better for pushing those higher SKU CPUs further whilst maintaining lower temps, though the additional expansion slots on this board (besides the main PCIe x16 5.0) are limited to PCIe 3.0 running at x1. Alternatively, there’s the ASRock X870 Pro which has the same 14+2+1 VRMs but is $50 cheaper (it also comes with four SATA ports but if more than two of these are occupied it will downgrade one of the M.2 slots, so it’s not much of a benefit).
ASUS Prime X870-P
