Asus Crosshair V Formula Motherboard Review

Asus have used the standard RoG red and black colour scheme for the Crosshair V Formula which gives it visual wow-factor without going over the top.  This consists of a black PCB with a combination of red and black fittings.  The use of black and red will also make it easy for enthusiasts to colour co-ordinate their system.

The Crosshair V Formula features AMD's latest 990FX chipset which is essentially a 890FX with a few new features bolted on.  The most important new feature is support for AMD's upcoming Bulldozer (Zambezi) processors.  There are a few other notable additions, however, such as 3-way SLI support.  The motherboard features the latest AM3+ socket which is black in colour, making it easy to differentiate from previous-gen AM2+ and AM3 sockets which were white.

Surrounding the CPU socket there are a series of large heatsinks which cool the 8 + 2 phase power regulation circuitry.  Power can be delivered to the CPU socket either via the 8 pin connector or by the 4 pin connector.  Both of these are located at the top of the board.

Next to the CPU socket we find the four DDR3 RAM slots which can support capacities up to 32 GB with speeds to 2133 MHz when overclocked.  On the edge of the board near the RAM slots we find the 24-pin ATX power connector, a front panel USB3.0 header and a fan header.

Asus have included a comprehensive selection of expansion slots on the Crosshair V Formula.  There are no fewer than four PCI Express x16 slots which are complemented by a single legacy PCI slot and a single PCI Express x1 slot. With two cards installed, both will run at x16 provided that you install the cards in slot 1 and 3.  In triple graphics mode, however, the second two cards are restricted to x8 while the primary card will still run at x16.  Obviously, if you install a single graphics card in the system, it will run at x16.

In the bottom right corner of the board there are seven SATA3.0 (6Gbps) ports.  Six of these are angled perpendicular from the board and one faces straight out of the board.  These six are driven by the AMD SB950 southbridge and support RAID in 0, 1, 5 and 10 configurations.  The other port is driven using an ASMedia ASM1061 controller which also drives the eSATA port on the back panel.

Along the bottom edge of the board we find numerous USB2.0 headers alongside the front panel connectors and the HD audio connector.  There is also a power button, a reset button and an OC button which will automatically overclock your system.  In the top right hand corner of the board we find the MemOK! button which will let the system boot regardless of the memory installed.

Asus would be hard pressed to cram any more connections onto the I/O back panel of the Crosshair V Formula.  From left to right we find a PSU port, two USB3.0 ports, two USB2.0 ports, an eSATA port, an optical S/PDIF connection, two further USB3.0 ports, an RJ-45 gigabit ethernet connector, 6 further USB2.0 ports (the white one is for RoG connect) and six 3.5mm audio connections.  There is also a handy CMOS reset nestled between two sets of USB ports on the left.

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