Asus ROG Crosshair IV Formula
The Motherboard...
Published: 27th April 2010 | Source: Asus | Price: ~£169 |
The Board Continued...
You shouldn't have much to complain about the board's layout either. Despite the amount of on board equipment, Asus have managed to arrange most components in a logical manner. There's plenty of open space around the CPU, easy access to the side-mounted SATA ports as well as I/O headers.
The Rear I/O cluster is fairly conventional. You'll find six USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 (in blue), Firewire, CMOS Clear, e-SATA, Gigabit Ethernet, 7.1 Sound and SPDIF. It is indeed a conventional cluster, but with one exception. You might be wondering what that vertically mounted USB port is for. This is for the ROG Connect Remote Overclocking and Diagnosis feature, which we will cover later.
All six of the "Red" SATA ports are operated by the new SB850 southbridge which permits 6.0Gb/s operation. There is also an isolated SATA 3.0Gb/s port powered by a JMicron controller. An interesting observation is that the layout of the Heatpipe Cooler prevented a seventh expansion port from being implemented. As a result, the four PCI-Express slots have been shifted down one space, resulting in the third and fourth slots sitting directly next to each other. This will prove problematic for prospective Quad CrossfireX users but I'm sure it's far from the end of the world for most.
A nifty set of buttons have been implemented at the bottom of the Crosshair IV Formula. From left to right this includes "TURBO KEY", an automatic overclocking function, "CORE UNLOCK" which provides you with the opportunity to unlock your castrated Phenom II X2, X3 or Zosma based X4 (9xxT) Processors. Again, if you intend on occupying the lower most PCI-E 16x slot, these buttons may not be accessible.
The motherboard's cooler can be removed with relative ease, exposing the 890FX and SB850 chips. Asus have been fairly careful with Thermal Paste application and the quality of contact is very good.
With the cooler refitted, it's now time to really get testing!
Most Recent Comments
I suspect the Extreme would be more, am guessing around ~£200?
I'm glad they adopted the red/black colours, looks nicer than the C3F imo and brings it into line with the intel boards.
I've never been one for motherboard looks but I must admit I did get suckered in, was the first thing that caught my eye about it, just waiting for my 1090T to arrive - can't wait to get it hooked up.
The worse review I've seen so far out of everyones is bit-tech, lack of depth, lack of benchmarks, lack of detail etc.
Enjoyed the review, can't find fault with it to be honest, not just saying that either if I thought it was crap I would say so.
not yet anyways:-P
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Originally Posted by name='barkaway'
the reason why i want em to test the 8GB set is that i have one myself, but i have never had the chance to test it cause i dont have the motherboard for it
not yet anyways:-P |
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