ASUS Asus Crosshair

Reviewed by: Hugh2

Duration of ownership: 3 Months

Strengths: What do you get when you cross a Corvette with a Cadillac? This Mobo has more bells and whistles than the Good Ship Lollipop! Just what you would expect from any mobo that carries the Republic of Gamers Logo!

Weaknesses: Unfortunately, it is last year's Corvette, and last year's Cadillac! Many problems reported DOA are due to older BIOS! In order to run the AMD Phenom AM2+ Quad Core CPU, or some of the newer released Dual Core AM2 CPU's it is necessary to flash the BIOS to update 0904, or to replace the BIOS chip! NOTE! There is no charge for the BIOS chip, it is covered under the warranty, but you still have to pay the shipping costs! $20.00 for Fed Ex Overnight Delivery!

Overall: High quality and workmanship, but even with an AM2+ Phenom CPU, it is still not very futureproof! You are still limited to a maximum of DDR2 800 MHz memory, and the mobo is not compliant with the new PCIE 2.0 specifications so this will be a bottleneck when you try to get the maximum performance out of the latest generation of video cards! If AMD CPU's and nVidia SLI is what floats your boat, I would highly recommend that you save your money! On March 28th nVidia has promised to unveil it's New GeForce 9800 GT, and release the drivers for Quad SLI! They also will unveil many new motherboard chipsets, to include two for AMD based SLI operation! Home this helps, Hugh-MANN

Reviewed by: Inestimable

Strengths: Stable performance, reliability, and a lot of extras.

Weaknesses: None to speak of.

Overall: Have really enjoyed this MB. I am running an AMD 6000 X2 with 2 Gig Ram, and had it overclocked to 3.15 GHz. I have had it almost a year and a half with no issues. Running a RAID 0+1 set up, with 7600GT Graphics card. While this is no longer cutting edge, it is still a great performer and has been reliable. Have not used SLI, but nice to know I could set it up.

Reviewed by: valpoaj

Strengths: LCD readout; good design; easy installation; Q-connector a nice bonus

Weaknesses: Price has not gone down over past year, making this motherboard a bit more costly than some of its peers

Overall: Had a tough decision to purchase this mo-bo since it was still $230. However, had no problems whatsoever when booting up for the first time and with updating the BIOS. Credit the built in cooling system for helping to keep my Athlon 6400+ at a reasonable temperature with the stock fan/heatsink combination. Q-connector was pretty handy and made the installation slightly easier. Not a no-brainer of a purchase, since there are mo-bos out there that would perform almost as well for less coin, but this is still one of the best products out there for AMD users.

Reviewed by: Octets

Strengths: Stability, overclocking ability, LED board lighting

Weaknesses: CPU speed & RAM speed are linked together (i.e., unable to manually change the FSB/DDR ratio)

Overall: For few year I stopped using ASUS for motherboards because of some bad experiences. However, deciding now to give them another chance i am glad i did. The board not only has been rock solid, it also sustained my overclocking and occasional mishaps in that regards. I should also add that it is performing flawlessly with my ATI X1950 card. this used to be an issue with nForce based boards. The board also comes with 6 Nvidia SATA2 ports (and 2 external SATA2 ports). the Nivida ports can be individually configured for RAID/non-RAID. Using these ports, I am running 2 different RAID-1 arrays and 1 single non-RAID SATA2 HDD. overall, i am quite pleased with this board. something i could not say for the previous 3 boards i got from other manufacturers.

Reviewed by: edthemag

Strengths: Love the lighted back panel connections! This baby is LOADED with geek goodies. Super for OC'ers.

Weaknesses: Price seems a little steep until you consider what you getting.

Overall: If the back of your system is in the dark then the lighted back panel alone may be enough to sell you on this MB. You can even check the time while your back there. Plenty of SATA plugs w/raid. Super fast

Reviewed by: Luke Spragg

Strengths: LCD error posting panel, LED plug indicators, cool, overclocking ability, expandable, 8GB RAM limit!

Weaknesses: It doesn't make ice cream or candy... :'(

Overall: I would highly recommend this board to any avid gamer or geek looking for an extreme motherboard that is easy to overclock and beautiful to the eye. This motherboard is packed full of powerful features as well as plenty of eye candy that will keep you drooling for hours on end. I myself was drawn to the unique LCD poster on the back and the LED plug indicators. There are many other features as well such as the heat pipe and being able to pack 8GB of RAM into this sucker! I am only using 2GB right now due to lack of spending money, but I would max it out if I could and enjoy the hickup-free system and smooth ride. Pop in a DirectX 10 card and then you are all set for loads of fun, exciting gaming and movies. I give it two thumbs up and 5 stars.