Board Design & Layout

Upon first glance, the Asus Crosshair IV Extreme makes prominent utilise of an advanced cooling setup. Heatpipes connect the SB850 southbridge and Lucid HydraLogix engine to the massive heatsink roofing the power phase circuitry and 890FX northbridge fleck. The 890FX northbridge is i of the almost power-hungry chips of the AMD 8-serial, consuming xix.half dozen watts, so the larger heatsink is probably warranted.

We dislike the small blower fan embedded in the large primary heatsink as it emits a high pitch noise that tin exist heard over the other system fans. The current BIOS version doesn't provide control over this fan, then there'south no style to irksome it down. If you feel your CPU cooler directs plenty air over the motherboard, you tin always opt to unplug the born fan.

The Crosshair IV Extreme features the new Farthermost Engine Digi+ (eight+2 phase CPU power design with ML Cap) which is designed to combine loftier quality analog and digital blueprint elements that provide optimum electrical, thermal and material functioning for reduced switching delay times and improved point accuracy.

Typical digital VRMs requires a high switching frequency of 800KHz or above to operate due to their logical limitation, merely the ROG Extreme Engine Digi+ is capable of delivering the same level of ability stability with a switching frequency every bit depression as 250KHz. This allows for a lower operating temperature and greater efficiency.

Extreme overclockers will as well appreciate the ROG Crosshair III Extreme's LN2 manner that solves cold-boot bugs which can ingather upwardly with liquid nitrogen cooling, while Q Reset offers a quick and easy way to clear the CMOS when frosting prevents a reset in standby mode.

As y'all would expect from a tier 1 board maker, the Crosshair IV Extreme's design is very dandy and tidy. Often we find that when the DIMM slots are also close to the main PCI Express slot, information technology becomes impossible to install memory modules without first removing the graphics card. This can exist a hassle for those with a big graphics cards in small cases, every bit they can be quite bad-mannered to remove.

Asus has excluded the DIMM slot clips from the bottom of the slots, keeping them but at the peak where they are easily accessible. This means that users only have to use the top clips to remove and install memory modules, eliminating the annoying DIMM/PCIe conflict.

Those wanting to use 2-way or even iii-way CrossFireX on this motherboard will be pleased with the large amount of space between each graphics card. Because the Crosshair IV Extreme is designed to use the first and third slots for CrossFire, Asus has placed two slots betwixt them to promote salubrious airflow.

However, the downward side to this is that the HydraLogix engine slots are positioned closed together (second, 4th and fifth slots). Each is separated past just i other slot, meaning that the graphics cards accept practically no room for proper airflow.

The SATA ports are mounted on a xc-degree angle to avoid interfering with long graphics cards. The CMOS battery is positioned above the SATA connectors, making it easily accessible, though at that place is a CMOS reset push on the I/O panel, so you would probable use that to reset the BIOS.

The I/O panel is well stocked and includes simply a unmarried legacy connector, a PS/2 port for older keyboards. At that place are besides seven USB two.0 ports (1 port is for ROG Connect), two USB three.0 ports, six audio jacks, coaxial/optical S/PDIF-out connectors, a Firewire port, dual eSATA ports, Ethernet, as well as the CMOS reset button and an ROG Connect On/Off switch.

The board supports some other six USB ports via headers, and Asus has included a single 2-port SATA/i-port Firewire bracket in the package, forth with a CrossFireX connector, RC Bluetooth bill of fare, Thermal Sensor Cable Pack, ProbeIt cable gear up, ROG Connect Cablevision and a number of blackness SATA cables.