Hardware Award
ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z
RRP: $229.99 | Website: www.asus.com
Test Machine
AMD FX 8350
MSI NGTX680 Lightning
(310.64)
Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB
CoolerMaster Silent Pro M2
1500W
Windows 7 64-bit SP1 /XP SP3
A
MD’s 990FX chipset
is old. It’s in need of
a refresh and there’s
no two ways about. It’s
astounding that motherboard
vendors have managed to
still sell boards with this
chipset given just how dated
it’s become.
As much as we wish AMD
would bring out a new
chipset, it is boards such as
this one that stay that wish
and in many ways, make it
ok for AMD to not bring out
a new chipset. The original
Crosshair V board was
available when Zambezi
30 The OverClocker Issue 22 | 2012
launched some time ago, but
it’s been updated (hence the
Z version) to offer even more
features than before. In fact
right now, the Crosshair V
Formula-Z takes over from
the GIGABYTE 990FXAUD7 as the best AM3+
motherboard around.
Sure it may ‘’only” be a
three-way Crossfire and SLI
board, instead of four-way
but that’s understandable as
its highly unlikely anyone on
an AMD platform is investing
in four 7970 graphics cards.
Especially given that the
platform is still tied to the
PCI-Express 2.0 standard
with no 3.0 support as yet.
However multi-GPU
support is easy, so we are not
moved solely by that, but it’s
everything else on the board
that makes it easily the most
compelling motherboard for
the AM3+ platform right now.
The features we are most
concerned with are the
voltage measuring points;
an 8+2+2 Phase PWM (more
than enough to maximize
clock speeds on the FX CPU)
and most interestingly the
DirectKey button. Simply put,
once you hit that button you
will always boot up into the
BIOS without having to time
your “Del” key press. Sounds
like a lame feature when
you first read about it, but
with those long overclocking
sessions and tweaking it may
actually come in very handy.
ASUS also claim 2,400MHz
memory support, even
though in the BIOS you can
select even higher dividers
allowing for 2,600MHz.
Needless to say, this
2,400MHz memory support
isn’t unique to the ASUS
board, but as it’s been the
tradition with ROG boards.
It’s easiest to get 2,400MHz
working on the Crosshair
V Formula-Z. Other boards
don’t allow the simple
selection of an X.M.P profile,
but that’s all we had to do
with the Formula-Z and we
were up and running.
On the subject of memory,
we found it interesting
that ASUS has introduced
what they term T-Topology.