ASUS celebrates 20 years of ROG with the Crosshair 2006, a retro-styled X870E motherboard

ASUS has announced the ROG Crosshair 2006 motherboard, paying homage to the first ROG motherboard, released 20 years ago. It is described as a cousin to the Crosshair X870E Dark Hero, but with a design language that transports gamers back to the early 2000s, featuring a retro copper aesthetic and classic ROG blue elements.

While the design offers a nostalgic look, that's about the only retro thing here. The rest of the motherboard offers the most advanced gaming technology available in 2026, including features that 2006 gamers could only dream of. That includes a 2-inch OLED screen on the main M.2 slot that can display CPU clock speeds, temperatures, custom GIFs, animations, and more.

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Another prominent design theme is the blue-and-white color scheme for memory, PCIe, and SATA connectors. In addition, rather than hiding components under plastic shrouds, the board boldly exposes its copper heatsinks alongside much of the PCB and its components.

Under the retro design is the X870E chipset supporting AMD Ryzen 9000 processors and up to 256GB DDR5 memory. For expansion, it provides two PCIe 5.0 x16 slots, five M.2 slots, and four SATA 6GB/s ports. As for connectivity, users get 10Gb and 5Gb Ethernet ports, Wi-Fi 7, and Bluetooth 5.4.

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Like the ROG Crosshair X870E Dark Hero, the ROG Crosshair 2006 supports ASUS's AIO Q-Connector technology, designed for gamers who want powerful liquid cooling without cable clutter. A Q-Connector-compatible AIO receives power and control signals directly from the motherboard. The ROG Strix LC IV series is said to be the first liquid cooling system to support the AIO Q-Connector.

Ultimately, ROG motherboards have come a long way, and the comparison between the new Crosshair 2006 and the original that inspired it makes that clear. From the overall design to dramatically larger heatsinks to fewer but faster PCIe slots, the differences are hard to ignore. Even the packaging plays the part, with the board arriving in a retro-style box designed to look and feel like something pulled straight from 2006.