ASUS Crosshair III Formula AM3 DDR3 790FX Crossfire Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
1,018 words · ~5 min read
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so I have a bu request unboxing for you today this is the assus Republic of
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Gamers branded board so you know it's going to be feature Rich and have good
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accessories and this is the Crosshair 3 formula this is a motherboard it is
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designed for gamers and it has support for the AMD fenom 2x4 X3 it is 790 FX
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and it has Crossfire X support so the first thing you will notice about the
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Crosshair 3 is that it has a window nah
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the motherboard doesn't have a window the box has a window window so you can actually check out the board on the
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store shelf before you buy they've done a quick overview of the features that
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set this board apart so let's go through that really quickly here you've got memo
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K which is a solution that allows you to press a button on the board and in
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theory it should be able to post with pretty much any memory which will allow
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you to get into the BIOS configure the optimal settings and then get the
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computer running you've got CPU level up which is a simple click for instant
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upgrade basically a software overclocking utility Supreme FX with xfi
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software that's pretty cool so they've updated their Supreme effects uh little
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daughterboard sound card to xfi then you've got a bundled copy of 3D mar6 and
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kasperski Antivirus and then oh yeah we've also got start and
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reset buttons on board I always like to see that on any highend or even a lowend
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board it's a great feature on the back it reiterates pretty much the same thing
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and yeah that's it okay so let's get this thing open and dive right into what
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is arguably the highest end am3 board
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out there right now so accessory package first as per my usual Arrangement you've
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got a nice black box here containing all of your accessories so first of all
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you've got an IDE cable all right then
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you've got five sat cables this is kind of an odd number of SATA cables okay
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five and then you've got a USB and fire
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wire PCI back plate then you have the
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LCD poster now I the LCD post has been
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around for a while in their Republic of Gamers line and I've never seen it do
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anything more useful than inform you with a CPU init error that your board
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isn't working but if I didn't already know it wasn't working I wouldn't have
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plugged in the LCD poster okay there's your 7.1 audio as well as your two
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different kinds of digital audio out with the Supreme FX listen with absolute
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HD xfi supports up to eax 4.0 this is a
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PCI Express 1.0 card okay sorry PCI
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Express 1X card next we have some zip ties for cable
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management then we have their Q connector technology I mean most cases
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come with block connectors these days anyway so it's not a huge deal but it's
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nice to have then you've got an IO Shield okay and then the Crosshair 3
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formula users guide as well as a drivers
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DVD don't use this download the latest drivers off the manufacturer website as
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per my usual advice all right next let's
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get to the board itself so so it comes in its nicely little
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windowed casing here let's get the top
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plastic cover off and figure out how to get it out of here I think I need to
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move these aside and then I can lift the board out this way here we go okay so
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first thing let's do the general layout so you've got your power connectors in
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their usual desirable places with the 24 pin along the right hand Edge and the
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eight pin up at the top left corner of the board you can see the plug right
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here for your LCD poster so so be aware of that and then you've got your power
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design or your whatever 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
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9 10 phase power design right here as well as your mosfet Cooling and your
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North Bridge and South Bridge cooling then you've got your am3 socket so this
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supports am3 DDR3 chips only at well at
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this time only DDR3 chips because all of
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the dim slots on the motherboard are DDR3 dual Channel DDR3 compatible down
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at the bottom you've got three PCI Express 1X ports one PCI port and then
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two PCI Express 16x ports these operate at full 60 next and they are compatible
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with Crossfire but not with SLI in terms
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of your oh yeah yeah yeah here let's have a look at these onboard power
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buttons so there's your start there's your reset here's your memo okay button
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and then clear seos is still done with a jumper on this board so you don't
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actually have a button for that internally but more on that later and
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then here we've got four SATA ports that our right angle and then we have one
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additional non- angled SATA port now let's have a quick look at the back IO
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panel of the board so you've got six USB ports that's very few on a
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board of this sort of uh a price point but I'm guessing there's some kind of
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reason for it you've got one PS2 keyboard port and then you've got a
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clear seos button bag here honestly this is my favorite place in the world for a
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clear seos button it can come in handy and be a total Lifesaver then you've got
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EA fire wire and 1 GB Ethernet port so
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thank you for checking out my unboxing of the ASUS Republic of Gamers Crosshair
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3 formula