Asus Crosshair V Formula Motherboard Review

The Asus Crosshair V Formula is visually a very typical ROG motherboard with a black PCB and sexy red accents.  Those accents occur on the primary expansion slots and external connectors but also as an extruded ROG logo across the PWM heatsink.  Overall layout is typical for an ATX design with the memory slots to the right of the processor and chipsets found in the normal location.

Flipping a motherboard over can tell you a lot about its construction.  Here you will find several surface components around the CPU socket and a couple of black headspreaders directly under the PWM.   One thing many vendors have started doing is only wiring the PCI Express slots for how many lanes they will actually support, this is basically to save trace space and likely the cost a few pins in each of the sockets.

ASUS includeds a very unique PWM design with their motherboards called Digi+ VRM.  The digital VRM is a programmable mirco processor that controls each of the digital power phases to increase power efficiency and lower overall heat production.  Combined together this translates to higher system stability, better overclocking and longer life.  System tuners can control the VRM thru software or manually thru BIOS controls however, in most cases, you can leave the settings on auto and enjoy all of the benefits without the hassle.

The Crossshair V Formula comes with a Hybrid 8 phase digital PWM with an additional 2 phases dedicated to the North Bridge.  Looking at the board we can see all 10 power phases surrounding the CPU socket along with a line of capacitors to regulate power delivery.

Behind the CPU socket you'll find the 12v CPU power connectors and much to our surprise there are two of them.  The 8-pin socket will be your primary power with the 4-pin socket being reserved for subzero overclocking adventures.