With so many different motherboards on the market, it's hard for vendors to make something that makes you really pay attention to it. And in the case of the new Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Glacial, that's exactly what happened when I first saw it, because the only thing I really noticed was that it has pre-installed Wi-Fi drivers. However, taking a closer look reveals all kinds of things: some good, some great, and something really odd.

As with all of Asus' ROG Crosshair boards, the X870E Glacial is a top-end, mega-bucks model, replete with M.2 slots, heatsinks, and a whopping five-inch LCD panel. An awful lot of motherboards pass through my hands, so I honestly didn't pay that much attention to it (sorry Asus), other than the drivers thing.

But now that I've taken a closer look, there are some things about it that I really like and hope to see across more boards, especially those that are more affordable. To start with, Asus' horribly-named 'EZ PC DIY' stuff is genuinely useful: there's a solid lock for both PCIe slots, which is easy to access and use, plus the M.2 slots get quick-release mechanisms for the SSD itself and the heatsinks.

New to this family of goodies is a proprietary connector for an AIO liquid cooler. Normally, I'm no fan of anything that locks you to a vendor, but in this instance, I do think having a row of large pins/pads is much better than having to deal with PWM header and USB cables to power and control a cooler.

Mind you, Asus' AIOs are fiercely expensive, so I should imagine it will be a good while before this makes an appearance in any mainstream products.

That's the great stuff. What's possibly good (perhaps great, perhaps rubbish) is that you can pop off a small cover to reveal a couple of connectors for a magnetically attached fan, included with the motherboard, that blasts air along the length of the DRAM sticks installed in the board.