The Crosshair V Formula is one great looking board; who would not appreciate the esthetics of the ROG theme. The PCB is entirely black and complemented by the contrasting Red and White.
There are eight (8) fan headers strategically positioned all across the Crosshair V Formula and they are all 4-pin as well; look for the extensive customizations available for monitoring and tweaking within the UEFI so you get the most out of them. Oh yea, while we are talking about these fan headers you also have 3 thermal sensor connections which you can plug the provided probes into and attach the other end on the devices you want to monitor within the UEFI by enabling the Optional Fan Headers 1-3 if you use these probes. Now you can monitor the temps on those high end components as well.
The Crosshair V Formula is an ATX Form Factor board which measures 12”x9.6” which means you will be able to mount it in most any Mid-Size or larger chassis. A cursory look reveals the layout is nice with things being layout out on the board to make your install pretty much worry free.
Turning the motherboard over we see ASUS is serious about removing heat from the MOSFETs, notice the heatsink plate which is held in place with screws instead of pushpins or glued on. ASUS continues to strive for quality in their products and I am sure you will have to agree as we take you through this review.
In the image below you will notice the 8-pin CPU power connector which is located close to the edge of the top of the board for easy cable access. There is also a second 4-pin CPU power plug connection where you can feed those 8-Core processors (when they arrive) more power if you are into some extreme overclocking when the voltages are going to be high and the temps extremely low.
We really like the new color scheme of the CPU socket; the black looks so much nicer than that old cream colored socket on earlier AMD boards; why plant a cactus in the middle of a rose garden. The black socket also denotes that this board is an AM3+ board.
While we are looking at the socket you will notice that the two bars that used to run on each side of the processor are gone which should mean easier cooler attachment.
Unlike ordinary digital VRM design, the Extreme Engine Digi+ combines the advantage of both the digital and analog VRM design, delivering less switching delay while offering better accuracy at the same time. In addition it also offers finer spacing of PWM power frequency interval, the choke used also sustains 25% more current than ordinary designs, capable of delivering up to 40A. As you can see the Crosshair V Formula has 10 large chokes surrounding the CPU socket; some folks just count these chokes to determine the Phase Count of the board which is generally accurate (although a phase is not something you can see it is an electrical term), however, you need to count the choke, MOSFET and the drivers since all three together make up a single phase. These chokes are filled with a specially mixed compound (trade secret I am guessing) which promotes superior performance and greater efficiency which is why we have a 40Amp choke over the 15Amps found on other motherboards. This design is a metallurgic process ASUS calls SAP or SuperAlloyPower where the choke has been developed under extreme temperature and pressure to produce a component delivery all around superior performance.
Bring the implementation of EED+ together with the other aspects of the VRM the Crosshair V Formula allows for a wider range of switching frequencies and the ability to remain stable under voltage changes and lower electrical resistance allowing the board to be pushed harder and overclocked higher.
The primary heatsinks are cooled passively and have a continuous heatpipe connecting them. These heatsinks are downright beautiful with a unique angular tower design; we’re betting they are also very functional and should definitely keep temperatures under control.
The lower "Southbridge AMD SB950" heatsink design kind of flows with the line of the PCIe slots as well as the SATA connections giving the bottom half of the board a more uniform look in my opinion anyways.
To the right of the CPU area, we see the DDR3 memory slots in dual-channel configuration. The DIMM slots are designed with Q-DIMM, which have tab-less bottom clips so they do not conflict with the longer graphics cards. The Crosshair V Formula is capable of 32GB of DDR3 with speeds up to 2133MHz.
Further to the right of the DIMM slots is the motherboard’s 24-pin power connector, handily placed to suit either top or bottom-mounted power supply case designs.
Right in front of the 24-pin MB power connector are the ASUS Q-LED which is a real-time diagnostic LED for the CPU, DRAM, VGA and Boot Device. The debug monitoring option is really straight forward compared to the standard Port80 DeBug as it will lock and light up the LED of the device causing an issue.
Just above the DIMM slots we see that ASUS has included their popular “OC Zone”. Here in the OC Zone we have the probelt headers allow for the use of a voltmeter probes to measure critical real-time voltage readings for some serious high level overclocking.
The GO button is the small red button to the right of the Probelt. The GO button is a dual purpose tool; with the system powered down you can use it as the MemOK! Button by pressing it the LED will start to blink and the board will automatically reset your memory to a stable state. With the system up and running in Windows you can also use the GO button and it will overclock your system to a preset profile that you have defined in the UEFI.
The on-board CPU Level Up, Power and Reset buttons are located just below the PCIe lanes. These will prove to be a valuable tool especially when setting up your system on an open test bench.
Before moving on let’s take a second to consider the OC button just to the left of the Start and Reset buttons; This OC button provides a quick and easy button that enables a hardware overclock when first setting up the system. This is a great option for users who want better than stock performance but without the knowledge need for configuration of clock and voltage parameters within the UEFI.
To the left of the PCIe lanes you see the on-board 7.1 Audio Chip that is certified to work with the Creative X-Fi 2 software which is included on the motherboard CD.
The Crosshair V Formula features a total of seven SATA ports. The main group of six are ran through the AMD SB950 Southbridge; all six are SATA III 6GB/s and capable of RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10. The remaining SATA connection is controlled via the ASMedia Controller which also controls the eSATA port found on the back-panel. So, let’s recount, yep totals 7 SATA ports all 6GB/s capable a nice feature of this new ROG motherboard from ASUS.
Seems like the ASMedia SATA port just might be unavailable if you are running 3-way SLI/CF but that might depend on the length of the cards. Actually, you still might be able to use it but it will require you use a right angle connector SATA cable and then run it flat vertically until you can clear the cards and route it out of the case.
The spacing of the PCIe slots is perfect for 3-way SLI/CR and with dual slotted cards you will have some nice room between cards for air flow. The breakdown of the PCI slots is, 3 PCIe 2.0x16 which means (dual x16 or X16, X8, and x8) with a single PCI slot at x1, another PCIe 2.0 at x1 and lastly a PCIe 2.0 at x4 mode.
For a dual card setup you would use the 1st and 3rd PCIe 2.0 slots. For a three way SLI or CF you would add the 3rd VGA card into the second PCIe 2.0 slot. ASUS gives us this slot layout so we can have 3-way GPU support with overhang with the majority of 2-slotted cards available today. This is pretty sweet because overhang requires a much larger and more expensive chassis.
OK, are you confused yet, this reviewer might be, so I have a diagram taken from the ASUS reviewer’s guide which will make a lot more sense, at least it does for me.
The rear of the Crosshair V Formula features an impressive array of ports, sporting a PS/2 keyboard/mouse port, an impressive total of eight USB 3.0/2.0 ports, an eSATA port, and a Clear CMOS button to assist in recovering from any system issues. There is also the ROG Connect USB which is the white one and lastly an Intel GB LAN and Realtek 7.1 audio with optical out.
The Intel LAN is an outstanding implementation with regards to its performance, reliability and most significantly its advanced configuration options and compatibilities with applications and other operating systems is just another attribute that sets the Crosshair V Formula apart from the competition.
To use the ROG Connect feature you will need to turn it on; this is done by the switch that is located directly behind the rear I/O panel.
Let’s install some hardware onto the Crosshair V Formula and see how things look.