ASUS Crosshair V Formula 990FX SLI Crossfire Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,729 words · ~8 min read
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Welcome to my unboxing of the Crosshair 4 Formula. This is a 990X motherboard.
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It is an AMD motherboard, hence the Crosshair branding on the Republic of
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Gamers. It is compatible with all the latest AM3 CPUs. That one's got thermal
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compound all over it, so not going to show that off too much. but it is also
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compatible with upcoming AM3 Plus CPUs.
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So, that means we're going to be able to put uh so far undisclosed unreleased
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CPUs into this motherboard with no
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complications. Very, very cool. So, Socket M3 Plus supports 32 nm CPU up to
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eight cores. Okay, well, they're going to go ahead and say it then. Um, it's
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cool and quiet up to 140 watt CPU support. Here we go. 3 PCI E 2.06 Nex.
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So add up to 16 dual 16x or 1688. So
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that means you got full support for three-way uh graphics technologies using
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uh PCIe 8x native bandwidth for all three which means you're not going to
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see any performance degradation. Supports three-way NVIDIA SLI and
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Crossfire X technology. Okay, we've got support for six Theta 3 6 GB per second
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ports as well as an additional as media
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controller with giving us an external SATA 6 Gbit per second. So the ESATA on
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this board is actually SATA 3 6 GB per second. That's kind of cool. So if you
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had like a super high-speed SSD as an external drive, you could get the most
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out of it. Okay. Intel gigabit LAN. That's kind of interesting on an AMD
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board, but uh yeah, I I support that decision. Intel LAN is very well
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regarded. And we have an as media USB3 controller giving us four at the back
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and two at the midboard. Okay, let's go
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ahead and get this guy opened up. And I guess I spoiled my big surprise on the
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back there, and that is that yes, this board has full support for NVIDIA SLI
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technology on an AMD chipset. Wow. So,
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it supports Crossfire X and SLI. It's
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got ROG Connect, which means you can plug into an external computer and you
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can uh control the settings of the board itself. It has Extreme Engine Digi Plus,
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which is their combination of analog and digital design elements for the PWM.
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It's got game first, which is the Intel Ethernet, which is in theory lower
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latency and faster. Supreme FX X52.
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Okay. And that pretty much does it. Oh, it includes Demon Tools. Interesting. I
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like Demon Tools. Wouldn't mind a free copy of that with my
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motherboard. Okay, let's open this baby up and see what we got for accessories.
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So, we have six SATA 36 GB per second cables. That's uh they are all straight
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to right angle. So, all right angle cables. Crossfire bridge, SLI bridge.
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This still amuses me that there's SLI compatibility on this board. We have Q
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connectors. So that is for the front panel headers as well as one of the
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front USB 2 headers. We got some zip ties included. We got an IO shield with
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their puffy shiny backing on it. We have
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a Crosshair 5 formula series user guide as well as a drivers and utilities DVD.
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Download the latest from the ASUS website. We also have their handy cable
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labels. So, when you're bundling cables and routing them all somewhere, you
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won't lose track of which is which when you're plugging them into your drive. We
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got a quick start guide. We have one of those huge ROG stickers that you I guess
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you put on the side of your case.
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Um, yeah, I'm not not real sold on the ROG sticker. It's all good. We got a
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3-way SLI bridge included. And finally, the ROG Connect cable, which is just a
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straight USB A2A cable. Now, let's have
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a look at the board itself. So, this is, as with all of ASUS's ROG, Republic of
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Gamers boards, it is a very high-end
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board. It looks high-end, it feels high-end, and it performs high-end. You
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can take that to the bank. This thing actually looks great.
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This is one of the better looking ROG boards that I have uh that I have ever
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seen. So, why don't we start with the CPU socket area? So, here you can see we
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have a black socket. and they're calling it AM3B. So, this is an AM3 Plus socket.
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It is uh fully compatible with AM3 Plus CPUs as indicated by the black color. We
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also have the standard AMD mounting
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mechanism around it. Although, you can see it's missing those those pieces of
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plastic that bridge it together. No big deal. It uses the same mounting holes,
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the same mounting clips. This is going to be fully compatible with pretty much
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any AMD CPU cooler going back several socket generations. We have a really
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slick looking PWM cooler here with a heat pipe running down the middle of it.
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So, it's got a kind of a matte black and anodized red finish to it. Looks really
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good. So, you can actually see the chipset down there. So, this is cooling
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both the chipset as well as the PWM.
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Now, this I haven't seen yet. So, I have an 8 pin CPU power connector in its
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ideal location on the top left edge of the board. And I also have a four pin.
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So, it looks like ASUS is allowing you to deliver a tremendous amount of power
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to the CPU socket, but they have not opted to go with dual 8 pins, which we
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have seen on some high-end boards in the past. So, there's probably a reason for
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it, but there you go. So, you've got one 8 pin and one four pin CPU power
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connector. Okay, I'm going to do all the fan headers later cuz there seems to be
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a ton of them. We've got a go button. We've got four dual channel DDR3 slots.
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So, these are easy install slots, which means there's no clip on the one side.
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You slide the module in like this. Push it down, clip it in, just like that. All
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right. Here we've got our 24 pin connector in its ideal location along
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the right hand edge. And there's the midboard USB 3 connector. So, this is a
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great location for this. I very much prefer this to having it down here
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because this is closer to the front of your case, which is where it should be.
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All right. We have six SATA 3 6 Gbit per second ports that are running off of the
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AMD controller which is under this heat sink. And then we have this one running
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off of a custom chip. So that's a third party chip. I would use all of these
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before I go and use this one. Here's our front panel connectors. So your uh power
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switch, your LEDs, all that good stuff. We've got two USB 2.0 front panel
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connectors. We've got an overse button.
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We have a start and reset switch built in. Love these. These are very handy for
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me. And then we have front panel audio. Here's the X5 Supreme FX. And moving up,
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we've also got this, which is good. This is a four pin auxiliary power connector.
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If you're actually going to load four graphics cards or even three into this
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board, you should probably be using this. Okay. We have an ROG connect
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switch over here. So, what that is for is for using the external computer to
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change settings on your board. So, you'll just turn that on. You plug into
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the ROG Connect port right there. This is not a normal USB port. And it's off
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to the races. Now, this board has six expansion slots total. So, you can see
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the top slot spot is empty. You've got four PCIe 16x slots. So, these are
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capable of running it up to 16 8x8x for 3-way SLI or Crossfire. You have one
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PCIe 1X slot, one PCI slot in addition
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to those. And I did promise to tell you guys about all of the four pin fan
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headers on this board. There's a ton of them. Okay. So, there's 1 2 3 4 up here
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in the top right corner. Okay. Then there's one, two down here, three down
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here along the bottom edge. So, that's six. Wait, seven so far. And finally,
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one at the back here for your chassis fan. So, that's eight four pin PWM fan
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controllers. Outstanding. All right, let's have a
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look at the IO shield. At the back, we got four USB 3.0 ports. So, that is a
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total of six. One PS2 keyboard mouse combo port, a clear SIMOS button. This
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is the best place in the world for a clear SIMOS button. Big fan. Okay, we've
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got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven USB 2.0 ports, e SATA, that's
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running SATA 36 Gbit per second, I remind you, optical audio out, more USB
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3, the ROG connect, the Intel gigabit
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LAN, and then those look goldplated. We got goldplated 7.1 audio out. So, what
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that means is these are going to be more robust, more durable connectors than you
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would see if they were not goldplated. The mounting mechanism for the um
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chipset and PWM heat sinks is outstanding. We've actually got back
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plates on here that are using thermal interface material to uh in all
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likelihood interface with thermal heat producing components on the back of the
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board. We've also got a nice robust metal AMD back plate to go along with
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the plastic clips on the front. So, those are going to be very, very solid.
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Thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the Crosshair 5
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formula. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings,
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