ASUS Crosshair?

by **camaroguy1998** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 1:45 pm

Ok, I've been cruising LR forums for a month now and still have not found THE thread I'm looking for! So I am going to start it.
I am slowly picking up the parts for a new build and of course the mobo is one of the most important. I really thought LR would have a review of the Crosshair but I cannot find it! I've tried searching the forums with the search feature and by just looking!

Is anyone using the ASUS Crosshair?
I'd like to hear about your experiences with that board and maybe the M2N32 sli deluxe also.
The boards are very similar but there are a cpl features that are difffernt.
Does anyone recommend this board or recommend staying away from it?

by **werty316** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 10:57 pm

Searched for some reviews on google and most gave it two thumbs up.

http://www.hardware.info/en-US/articles ... d_review/1
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/0 ... air/1.html
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6593

by **camaroguy1998** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 11:19 pm

werty316 wrote:Searched for some reviews on google and most gave it two thumbs up.

http://www.hardware.info/en-US/articles ... d_review/1
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2007/0 ... air/1.html
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=6593

I've alrdy read the Hexus & Bit Tech reviews and I'm going to read the Hardware.info review tonight!
I was hoping someone here would have some real world experience with either board!
The people here at LR seem to have a pretty good knowledge base something I think I could trust.

Thanx werty316

by **werty316** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 11:31 pm

The Crosshair is a top of the line 590-SLi board and its an Asus so you know its good.

by **tomato** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 10:41 am

I was just going to re-iterate werty's comments.

- It's a high end 590-SLI mobo, so no cheaping out here

- It's an ASUS mobo, which should automatically instill a sense of quality.

I have no real-world experience with the Crosshair mobo, but those points above, along with the reviews cast it in a very positive light.

by **BiGg RiE** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 10:58 am

Hey I'm trying to make a decision on those 2 boards you listed as well and as far as i can tell the crosshair is the better board, functionality wise as well as asthetics. I think i'm goin to go with the crosshair.

I was ready to buy the M2N32 SLI untill i happened upon the Crosshair.

The only thing holding me back is that I'm reconsidering building a Core 2 Duo rig. They are faster than X2's but more expensive and I don't know much about them. I haven't built an Intel system since the original P4's launched so long ago. But speed is a big thing for me.

I think that all things considered the Crosshair is the best bet plus it's newly released the M2N32 will be 6 months old in a month.

I'll be making my final decision within the week so If i get it before you decide what to get I'll let you know how everything goes.

BiGg RiE

by **camaroguy1998** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 12:17 pm

BiGg RiE wrote:Hey I'm trying to make a decision on those 2 boards you listed as well and as far as i can tell the crosshair is the better board, functionality wise as well as asthetics. I think i'm goin to go with the crosshair.

I was ready to buy the M2N32 SLI untill i happened upon the Crosshair.

The only thing holding me back is that I'm reconsidering building a Core 2 Duo rig. They are faster than X2's but more expensive and I don't know much about them. I haven't built an Intel system since the original P4's launched so long ago. But speed is a big thing for me.

I think that all things considered the Crosshair is the best bet plus it's newly released the M2N32 will be 6 months old in a month.

I'll be making my final decision within the week so If i get it before you decide what to get I'll let you know how everything goes.

BiGg RiE

I hope you get a Crosshair, I would definitely like to hear how it goes for you!
Right now my new build plans are on hold, wifes car has passed away(well almost) so we're trying to narrow down what she would like!
When a woman isnt sure what she wants its a slow process!
:rolleyes:

by **BiGg RiE** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 7:03 am

Ok, so I settled on the crosshair I'll post the results of the install once it arrives.

by **Schwarz** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 9:03 am

My friend has a crosshair.
It performs well and looks awesome

by **camaroguy1998** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 3:22 pm

BiGg RiE wrote:Ok, so I settled on the crosshair I'll post the results of the install once it arrives.

Excellent! I definitely want to hear how it goes!
If you dont mind me asking.....where did you buy it from and how much did you pay?
I see ZZF has it for $245, still a bit high for me.

by **BiGg RiE** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 8:42 am

camaroguy1998 wrote:
BiGg RiE wrote:Ok, so I settled on the crosshair I'll post the results of the install once it arrives.

Excellent! I definitely want to hear how it goes!
If you dont mind me asking.....where did you buy it from and how much did you pay?
I see ZZF has it for $245, still a bit high for me.

Newegg, mwave, and clubit all have it for around 230 but with shipping actuall savings might only be 5 bucks from zzf.

Try ebay and mispell the mobo ie "aus croshar" misspelled auctions rarely sell and you might luck out and find it cheap with no reserve.

Good Luck.

by **Dragon_Cooler** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 1:38 am

My new build will be the intel board of that!!! I cant wait!!

by **Schwarz** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 6:10 am

Yah the Commando.
THats what I have.
It is *(&(*& awesome.
I am pushing my PD805 to 2.66 to 4GHz with it right now.
The only thing missing though are the blue leds that makes the Crosshair and the striker extreme look so good...
But besides the led I think its the best performing out of the 3 according to a few reviews.

by **Dragon_Cooler** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 10:31 am

from a couple of the reviews i read it wasnt, especially for the 400$ price tag

by **BiGg RiE** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 9:01 am

It's here, got it over the weekend. I've got a website I want to finish up on for a client then I'll be building my rig. I'll post comparison results in 3dmark03, 05, & 06 once it's set up in addition to overclocking results. I'm hoping the x2 4200 i've got is very overclocking friendly If can get any where near what the guys at legit reviews got here ~~> http://www.legitreviews.com/article/373/1/ :drool:

I'll be a happy camper.

Wish me luck :supz:

by **camaroguy1998** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 12:26 pm

BiGg RiE wrote:It's here, got it over the weekend. I've got a website I want to finish up on for a client then I'll be building my rig. I'll post comparison results in 3dmark03, 05, & 06 once it's set up in addition to overclocking results. I'm hoping the x2 4200 i've got is very overclocking friendly If can get any where near what the guys at legit reviews got here ~~> http://www.legitreviews.com/article/373/1/ I'll be a happy camper.

Wish me luck

Good Luck!

I'm looking forward to see how it performs!

by **BiGg RiE** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 9:10 am

Ok, so I built the system over this past weekend. I'll get into details a little later but for all intensive purposes the build went great I'd say I spent about 45minutes on the actuall install of the mobo itself. Which is great considering all the options and contections this thing comes with.

3DMARK06

I did a quick run of the full benchmark with all options on except the sound tests, I had a moderate overclock of 5% using the AInos gui overclocking utility from within windows xp Pro. My results are as follows:

Old max ovrclck = 4917 total
New moderate ovrclck = 6152 total $\:D/$

As you can see that's a pretty big gain especially when you take into consideration that I haven't even done any custom tweaking or optimization on how windows runs yet. The moderate overclock on my new build is faster that the max overclock with the old setup which did include all of the custom tweaks and manual overclocking.

I'll be reinstalling al my apps and games through out the week so I'll post new things as i get to them.

The install was not without a few hickups mainly due to my case being cramped. The main problem I had was when it came to installing the grafx card and my hard drive bay. My 7800GT is really long and I have 4 HDD's in my rig which made for a few redo's of the hdd config in the bay. but if I would have had a larger case or if my hdd bay had the connections faceing toward the window on my case instead of toward the mobo it wouldn't have been a problem.

LCD Poster

Ok, I'm extremelyhappy with this feature as it was very helpfull. once the rig was built and I was ready to install windows I powered on the system and it wouldn't post. first i tried restarting a few times, checked the pwer conection on the back, but that was fine as the system had power all my fans and lights were fully operational. So i take a look at the lcd poster and it gives me a DRAM code so I checked the vendor's list for the ram to find that my ram was not on it for ddr support ok so i took one stick out and tried again, this time the bootscreen started but stoped with a small artifact at the top. the lcd had the same message on it. so I took the ram out and put it back in. The problem was that the ram was not fully in the slot. I had felt the distictive click when I put it in but there is almost a 2 stage click on this mobo. It's like the clamps click and then the dimm slot clicks. once I did that everything worked perfectly. Case & point, had the lcd poster not told me to check the ram I would have been trying to figure out beeps or 2 digit numerical codes with no way to get to the internet to see what they mean. also, it's saved me alot of time on troubleshooting the problem as it narrowed it down to the dram. This is a great feature.

I did take some pix of the install problems and I'll post them when I get a chance.

All in all I'm pretty satisfied with the build and performance gain, and I can't wait to do some serious overclocking.

BiGg RiE

by **camaroguy1998** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 1:24 pm

Sounds good so far!
Out of curiosity, what case are you using?
I have a Tt Soprano I plan on using but if its going to be cramped I may switch with my Lian Li PC-75.

by **BiGg RiE** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 2:55 pm

I have a Thermaltake Tsunami VA3000BWA
Check it out here~~> http://www.xoxide.com/tttsunami.html

I love it as it helps keep my kids out with the door and the locks there are no exposed parts that a 2 or 1 year old can stick things in, my case is in a PC tray that's built into my desk.

I may have to upgrade my case at some point but no time soon not after all the work I just did with wire routing in this one. If you click on the other picture of the case's inards on the page i listed above you can see the HDD bay is flush with the back of the 5.25" bays which means the HDD itself will stick out about 2.5". I thought about taking out the front mounted fan and mounting my HDDs with the two back hole screws but the bay itself has been made so that only the front mount holes on the hdd can be used.

As cramped as my system is everything is staying pretty cool:

CPU: 39
Ram: 40
GFX: 42
HDD: 36

I've had it up for about 2 days countinuously right now.

by **camaroguy1998** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 12:01 am

BiGg RiE wrote:I have a Thermaltake Tsunami VA3000BWA
Check it out here~~> http://www.xoxide.com/tttsunami.html

I love it as it helps keep my kids out with the door and the locks there are no exposed parts that a 2 or 1 year old can stick things in, my case is in a PC tray that's built into my desk.

I may have to upgrade my case at some point but no time soon not after all the work I just did with wire routing in this one. If you click on the other picture of the case's inards on the page i listed above you can see the HDD bay is flush with the back of the 5.25" bays which means the HDD itself will stick out about 2.5". I thought about taking out the front mounted fan and mounting my HDDs with the two back hole screws but the bay itself has been made so that only the front mount holes on the hdd can be used.

As cramped as my system is everything is staying pretty cool:

CPU: 39
Ram: 40
GFX: 42
HDD: 36

I've had it up for about 2 days countinuously right now.

Size wise the Tsunami and the Soprano are the same, even the configurations are similar.
The way I see it the Soprano is the cheaper version of the Tsunami!

Those temps all look good!
What HSF are you using? I have the Zalman 9700LED I hope it performs as good as the reviews I've read say it does!

Did you have any fit problems? My plans are for an 8800GTX, so I'm bettin' size will matter!

You mentioned some pics, I'd like to see them!

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