Asus Crosshair III Formula - Review

INTRODUCTION
I was thinking about doing a new review for a while, and it struck me that a number of us have picked up new AM3 CPU's over the last couple of months with the 550 BE being one of the favorites. Today, there is barely any competition for the 550 BE at that price point (especially when unlocked) and it is quickly becoming one of the best VFM processors that one can buy today.

Keeping this in mind, and looking at how most of us have actually looked at teaming it up with an AM2+ motherboard, specially the Biostar lineup, I decided to give Asus a call and ask them for a review piece of their top of the line AMD solution....the ASUS CROSSHAIR III FORMULA.

The ASUS Crosshair III Formula isn't a new kid on the block but that hardly means its old news. This is the third version of ASUS's top of the line AMD motherboards and it is a vast departure from the previous versions in that it no longer uses an Nvidia chipset to provide SLI.


ASUS has jumped on the Dragon platform train by using AMD's 790FX chipset and providing two PCIe 2.0 x16 slots with CrossFire functionality. I wish we could have at least one motherboard with SLI functionality but we will leave that rant for later. The Crosshair III comes with AMD's 790 FX and the SB 750 combo. This has proved to be by far one of the best platforms for all AMD chips till date, with all the three top contenders for the AMD motherboard crown running the same configuration.

Let’s take a look at the features and specifications first:

CPU

* AMD Socket AM3 ;Phenom II /Athlon II /Sempron 100 Series Processors
* AMD 140W CPU Support
* AMD Cool 'n' Quiet Technology
* Supports 45nm CPU

Chipset

* North Bridge: AMD 790GX
* South Bridge: AMD SB750

Memory

* Dual-channel DDR3 memory architecture
* 4 x 240-pin DDR3 DIMM socket support up to 16GB
* Supports DDR3 up to DDR3 800/1066/1333/1600
* Supports ECC and non-ECC un-buffered memory modules

Expansion Slot

* 2 x PCI Express Gen 2.0 x16 slots
* 3 x PCI Express x1 slots
* 1 x PCI slots

Storage

* Support by AMD SB750
* 5 x Serial ATAII 3.0Gb/s devices
* RAID 0/1/5/10/JBOD
* 2 x IDE Ultra DMA 66/100/133
* 1 x eSATA

Audio

* SupremeFX X-Fi Audio Card featuring 8-Channel Audio Codec
* EAX Advanced HD4.0
* X-Fi Crystalizer
* Supports 1x S/PDIF output
* Supports Coaxial/Optical S/PDIF output

Rear Panel I/O

* 1 x PS/2 keyboard or PS/2 mouse connector
* 1 x RJ45 LAN connector
* 1 x eSATA
* 6 x USB ports
* 1 x FireWire 800
* 1 x Clr CMOS switch

Internal I/O

* 1 x 24-pin ATX Power Supply connector
* 1 x 4-pin ATX 12V Power Connector
* 8 x 4-pin fan connections
* 1 x Power on button
* 1 x Reset button
* 1 x IDE connector
* 3 x thermal sensor connector
* 1 x Front panel switch/LED header
* 5 x Serial ATA 3Gb/s connectors
* 3 x USB 2.0 headers supporting 6 additional ports
* 1 x IEEE1394 header supports 1 additional port
* 1 x LCD POSTER port

Form Factor

* ATX Size, 305mm*245mm
* 9 mounting holes

Warranty

* 36 months on parts

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