Asus Crosshair II Formula Review & Overclocking - PAGE 2

The Board

The board has a nice clean design; and while they are not huge, the copper heat pipes and heatsinks are likely to keep chipset temperatures down.

There are three GPU slots, two PCI slots, one PCIe 1x and one audio riser card slot.

If you happen to install three double-slot GPU cards, you will not be able to have any expansion card (other than the audio riser) plugged in - so if you go for triple SLI, the system would be dedicated to gaming.

Ah, the bundle. You get the ever-popular SATA cables, IDE and floppy cable, LCD post monitor, easy jumper blocks, a chipset cooler, additional USB and FireWire port, HDMI to VGA port and SLI bridges, drivers and a full copy of Company of Heroes: Opposing Forces.

Here's a closer look at the audio riser card:

And here are the DIMM slots. Please note that if you use a large heatsink such as a Noctua 12, the innermost DIMM cannot have tall heatsinks as it would prevent the processor's heatsink from being mounted.

Here are the six SATA connectors - they are the right-angle variety; personally, I prefer the "normal" ones.

Here is a closer look at the expansion slots:

Asus seems to have done a nice job providing plenty of solid state capacitors around the processor socket.

Here's a closer look of the heatpipes on the North and South bridges:

And last but not least, the rear I/O panel. Note the CMOS clear switch. We also find a PS/2 keyboard connector, six USB 2.0, two Gigabit Ethernet, eSATA, SP/DIFF, optical out and FireWire connections along with a VGA socket and an HDMI connector.

Ok, what about the BIOS?