With today's release of the 2nd Generation Ryzen CPUs it's important to have a motherboard to put them in, and the MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC might be just the ticket.
I'm going to disagree with you on the looks, I like the look of this board, see what you mean by VRM temps not even worth the worry.
For the difference in price I'd go with the Crosshair because of the extra usb on the back