Lab Report – Asus Crosshair IV Formula
Manufacturer: Asus
Product: Asus Crosshair IV Formula
Price: approx £158.98 (inc VAT)
Specification [full specification here]
Socket: AM3
Chipset:
Nortbridge: AMD 890FX
Southbridge: AMD SB850
Introduction
The Crosshair series of motherboards are the AMD based range in Asus’ ROG (Republic Of Gamers) product line, the latest addition to which is the fourth generation Crosshair IV Formula. Each generation is more feature rich than the last and the Crosshair IV Formula certainly upholds the tradition, being crammed to the gills with features; support for the latest AMD X6 six-core processors, support for up to 16GB of DDR3 memory through four DIMM slots, four PCI-E graphics slots supporting CrossFire X technology plus both SATA 6GB/s and USB 3.0 support and all the overclocking aids that you come to expect from a ROG motherboard.
Layout
It’s a striking looking board finished in the now standard ROG colours of red and black with beautifully engineered heatsinks that wouldn’t look out of place in a modern art museum to passively cool the chipsets and major power components of the board. Despite the feature richness of the board everything is well laid out with perhaps the exception of the 8-pin power header placement which is tucked up really tight to one of these heatsinks, a few more millimetres out and it would be so much easier to access.
Features
Expansion slots
Although four PCI-E x16 slots are provided and can be filled with graphics cards they only run at full x16 if only two slots are occupied, add a third card and the speed drops to x16,x8x8 while adding a fourth drops all the slots to x8 speed. To ease any confusion the slots are clearly labelled as is everything else on the board. Also provided are two PCI 2.2 slots and a single x1 PCI-E slot.
Memory support
Four DIMM slots are provided and support up to 16GB of DDR3 memory running at 1066MHz and 1333MHz at standard speeds and up to 2000MHz when overclocked. The slots themselves have locking latches on just one end, which are becoming a more regular sight on boards these days and for boards that are more compact or less well laid out than the Crosshair IV Formula they are a god send as it means you can swap memory modules in and out without having to take the graphics card out first.
Storage
One of the features of the new AMD SB850 Southbridge is the integration of SATA 6Gb/s, the chipset supports six ports and Asus have edge mounted these on the board at 90 degrees. Sitting just inboard of them, mounted in the usual orientation is a single 3Gb/s port for use with an optical drive. If you are still using ATA hard drives then this board isn’t for you as it’s SATA only.
Just like the Intel based ROG motherboards, the Crosshair IV Formula features ROG Connect, which enables you to control and overclock the board via a laptop and ProbeIT voltage pads for those people who really have to know exactly what voltage various components are using.
Extreme overclockers tend not to bother with cases so for them the fact that Asus has placed four large control buttons on the edge of the board must be a source of joy. Two of these are the standard on/off (in this case large and red) and reset buttons while the other two are for Asus’ Core Unlocker and Turbo Key II technologies. The Core Unlocker does what it says on the tin, unlocking any disabled cores on your CPU, something you can also do in the BIOS. The Turbo Key allows you to overclock the board without going into the BIOS, a handy tool for people who want to overclock but are put off by the thought of getting their hands dirty having to plough through the myriad of options in the BIOS.
Back Plate
As with many motherboards in the market today, the rear panel is crammed with ports to connect the board to the outside world. From left to right we have a PS/2 keyboard port sitting on top of two USB 2.0 ports, next up is the the very useful clear CMOS button and the two blue coloured USB 3.0 (backward compatible) ports. The small port next to these is for the optical S/PDIF out, next up is a stack of ports containing two more USB 2.0 ports, a Firewire port and an e-SATA port (coloured green). The next two items are for the ROG connect system, an on/off button and a vertically stacked USB 2.0 port which can be used as a normal USB port and finally we have the audio ports for the SupremeFX XFi audio chip
Box Bundle
The one thing you can say about the ROG range of motherboards is that they certainly come with a lot of ‘stuff’ and it usually is a demonstration of the art of packing a lot into a small space. With the Crossfire IV Formula there is the usual informative manual, driver CD, I/O shield, an expansion plate with two USB 2.0 ports and a single e-SATA port, a Crossfire bridge, a ROG Connect cable, four SATA 3Gb/s cables, two SATA 6Gb/s cables, some cable ties, a gaudy case sticker and finally the very, very useful Asus Q-Connector’s for the PC case front panel connectors.
Performance
(full results here)