ASUS Crosshair IV Extreme Review

Been testing the board myself for a while now and I'm amazed by the quality. The feeling when going over 410MHz HTT with DDR3-DRAM was similar when hitting well over 400HTT with the DFI NForce4 board years ago!

This board is one for the ages. It took everything I could throw at it (including up to a rather high 1.75 Vcore) and came back for more, scoffing at the efforts of this mere mortal to topple it. Looking at other AMD boards, it would be tough to find one as strong as this. There are other nice looking boards with solid features, but even if other things were equal the Extreme has one important item they do not – the Lucid Hydra chip.

There is one minor draw back – price. At $289.99 it is literally the most expensive 890FX motherboard on the market. …but look up. Just take another breeze through the features this board has. Look at the seamless, smooth operating software package. Don’t forget to look at what it allowed a complete newbie at extreme cooling to do! So no, it’s not light on the wallet, but it is very heavy on value.

If you want the best, you know you’re going to have to pay for it. What I can say is that this board is worth every penny. It’s not for everyone; I wouldn’t recommend it to someone that never plans on overclocking or gaming with the Hydra advantage. But if you would use the extensive feature set and like what you’ve seen it do here, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this board to you. If you are an extreme overclocker that wants to bench AMD and has the cash to throw down, do not hesitate for one minute. Go and get yourself a Crosshair IV Extreme. You will not be disappointed