ASUS X570 Crosshair VIII Formula Review
Up Close Details
At the bottom right we find all the regular elements of front panel and SATA ports. This is also the spot that contains the dedicated 12V pump header for your custom water loop, should you be lucky enough to own such a thing. There is a flow monitoring point too, just in case you’re the nervous kind who wants a live display showing how well things are moving.
Beneath that screw you’ll find one of the M.2 slots. Using the TUF Armor and heat spreader combo like this you should get the airflow from the chipset fan keeping your M.2 drive working at peak performance all the time. Case your eyes a little lower and we have the USB headers, addressable header and RGB LED strip that is such a part of the ASUS AURA lighting setup, as well as the LN2 jumper for those of you with extreme overclocking plans in mind.
The SupremeFX audio solution on ASUS motherboards has long been amongst the best onboard sound you can get, indeed it’s so good that it started the trend for most systems going without a Creative or similar soundcard in a PCI slot. With a break-out line separating the sound components from the rest of the PCB you can be assured of smooth, crackle free audio at all times.
We’ve loved the TUF Armor since it first appeared back in the P67 days, and the use of it here on the Crosshair VIII Formula only highlights why we like it so much. It just smooths your whole system out and makes it look much more professional. The addition of the silver flashes should pick up the highlights from your RGB LED strips nicely too.
The Zenith and Omega ASUS models redefined what we should expect from a power setup, and it is great to see the Crosshair VIII Formula taking a page from that book and doubling down on it. Not only have we got a beautiful arrangement of MOSFETs and Capacitors, but they are cooled with a beefy heatsink setup and, if you happen to have a suitable water cooled system, they are supplied with EK Waterblocks built in. No more disassembling your board and sending off to EK for some custom blocks. Balancing great water cooling potential with equally good air cooling ability is a tough plan and we look forwards to discovering how successful ASUS have been.
Any model that forms part of the ROG range, and particular their excellent Formula models, have all the connectivity options you could desire. The Crosshair VIII is no exception, with every type of USB port, both Gigabit LAN and 5G LAN for those of you with the necessary infrastructure to support such huge bandwidth, alongside the Intel Wi-Fi 6 we’ll look at on the next page, and of course the SupremeFX audio jacks.
