There are plenty of bells and whistles to be found on the Asus ROG Crosshair VI Hero motherboard, the company's flagship AM4 board for Ryzen. However, built-in Wi-Fi is not among them, or at least it wasn't until now.
For those who need it, Asus has introduced a variant of that board that now includes 2x2 802.11ac Wi-Fi connectivity. Aptly named the Crosshair VI Hero Wi-Fi AC, the Wi-Fi module on this motherboard supports MU-MIMO, which means it can connect to and communicate with multiple MU-MIMO supported devices simultaneously.
The latter distinction is important because the SU-MIMO standard only allows for routers to send and receive data from one device at a time. Typically you don't notice this on your home network because routers are very good about rapidly switching between devices. However, MU-MIMO can help reduce instances of buffering, especially on crowded home networks.
Other than a built-in Wi-Fi module, the Crosshair VI Hero Wi-Fi AC is the same board as the regular model. That's not a bad thing, as the Asus board is packed with features. It has four DIMM slots supporting up to 64GB of DDR4-3200 (OC) memory, two reinforced PCI-E 3.0 x16 slots, a regular PCI-E 3.0 x16 slot, and three PCI-E 2.0 slots.
For storage, there is an M.2 socket and eight SATA 6Gbps ports supporting RAID 0/1/10. Users also have access to a whole bunch of ports on the rear I/O panel, including eight USB 3.0 ports, two USB 3.1 ports (Type-A and Type-C), and four USB 2.0 ports. Asus also provides easy access clear CMOS and BIOS flashback buttons on the rear I/O.
It's not clear when the Crosshair VI Hero Wi-Fi AC will be available or for how much. As a point of reference, the non-wireless model sells around $255, so expect it to cost slightly more than that.
