mav2000
Herald
So lets start of with the board first:
Well what can I say, it looks fabulous. The colors just do it for me and this time the PCB is really black. The CH IV had a slight brownish tinge to it so I am happy to see this. So lets start with the main differences between the CH IV and the CH V:
That's about what I could figure out at this point of time and maybe there are a few more differences which I may find and I will add it to the list. The majority of the changes are to the VRM side of the board, which is one of the most important parts of any motherboard.
Moving on to a proper look at each part of the motherboard:
Lets start with the socket area. The area is clean and does not have any chips or capacitors for the most part. This will greatly help most CPU heatsinks and waterblocks to be easily compatible as well as help extreme benchers who like to put it under cold. The frame around the CPU is now a two part affair as compared to the older single piece, but it in no way changes the socket mounting in any way. I guess its just done to add some differentiation from the older AM3 boards. The heatsinks by themselves are quite beefy and do a good job of covering the VRM's as well as the NB AND is setup in such a way that the first PCIE slot is free from any protrusions. The mounting system on the heatsinks is a lot better than what it was on the CH IV and I will show you a few shots of that as well. On the right side of the photo above you can see the 8 Pin and an additional 4 Pin connector. The additional 4 Pin is for those that use extreme cooling and this additional 4 Pin brings in the extra power to satisfy the higher power demand. Till now, under water I have not found any use for it, so its mainly for use under LN2 or Dice.
At the bottom right of the picture you can also see the points where the actual voltages can be checked using a Multimeter.
As discussed above, the VRM and NB heatsinks are a much better affair now and you can see that the thermal pads have great contact between the VRM's and the heatsinks. The screws used are a lot more sturdy as well and they hold a set of aluminium plates at the bottom which help to cool the FET's there as well. But my favoutite part would have to be the ROG "Eye", which is the RED part of the heatsink.
Moving on, we see the USB 3 connectors for the front panel placed just below the 24 pin connector. I dont see that as much of an issue and should not make a difference to cable routing, though keeping it at the bottom with the rest of the front panel connectors would have probably made more sense.
Looking at the top rear of the board, you can see the ROG connect on/off switch, which to me is in a place which is not easily accessible. It would have been better to have this switch near the 24 pin or on the rear panel area. We also see a 4 PIN molex connection, which can be used to provide extra power to the PCIE solts for Crossfire/SLI setups. Now this was something that could and should have been moved near the 24 pin or the bottom of the board, to air cable management.
Moving on to the other side of the top area, we can see all the voltage checking area as well as the Go Button. The Go button helps to stabilise your ram and its a great feature specially on AMD as most ram kits are optimised for Intel.
Moving on to the bottom of the board, we have the SB heatsink with the ROG logo on it and its a more subdued version of the CH IV one. Rigt below the heatsink we have the ROG chipsets as well as the removable Bios chip. We can also see the Esata port as well as two 4 pin fan connectors. To anyone who has not used the CH IV or most of the newer ROG boards, all the fan connectors are 4 pin and PWN enabled.
Moving on the center of the bottom part of the board has the ROG buttons, with a Power, Reset and an OC button:
Along with that we see one more 4 pin fan connector as well as a 2 pin temperature probe connector. The board has a number of temperature probes and can be used with most thrid party probes to show the temperature of various locations on the board. I am using one of these to monitor the water temperature on my loop.
The PCIE slot layout is very similar to the old CH IV and I think it works well enough. The first and third slots do 16x in Crossfire/SLI and 2nd and 4th slots run at 8X each. There is a single PCI slot for use with some older hardware like sound cards or wifi modules.
At the left side of the board we have the Supreme X-Fi chip, which is in charge of onboard audio. The chip supports EAX Advanced HD 5.0, THX True Studio Pro, X-Fi Extreme Fidelity and Creative Alchemy. Most of this is just jargon for me, but some of the ausio enthusiasts on the forum may be able to understand and explain it better, so I will leave that to them.
Finally we see the rear I/O side of the board:
The rear has the normal setup, with 4 USB 3 ports, 7 USB 2 ports including a white one for the ROG connect, audio ports and a Clear Cmos port. The one thing I have liked on all ROG boards is the clear Cmos port easily accessible in the rear panel. This helps a lot while setting up ram and benching and is a 100 times easier to use than moving pins around.
That ends this part of the review and the next post will have an in depth look at the UEFI Bios, which I must say is a lot of fun to play with.
Well what can I say, it looks fabulous. The colors just do it for me and this time the PCB is really black. The CH IV had a slight brownish tinge to it so I am happy to see this. So lets start with the main differences between the CH IV and the CH V:
- AM3+ socket, which may be the difference in BD overclocking
- 2133+ ram overclocking. The CH IV was rated for 2000 Mhz, but we know we have seen higher clocks, but them have been few and far between.
- UEFI Bios
- 8+2 Phase Digi+ VRM's (I will get into more details later
- 5 Step Load Line Caliberation (The CH IV had 3 steps)
- Real time power adjustment behavior
- Anti surge protection
- Dual drivers for the power components compared to single drivers on the CH IV
- Intel LAN - A lot of gamers prefer the Intel LAN chipset to Marvell and others and the CH V has it
- 3 Way SLI/Crossfire X and 4 Way SLI, with an expander card
- ESATA 6G
- 6 USB 3 ports as compared to 2 on the CH IV
- Ai Charger + for charging Iphones and other devices at 3X the speed of normal USB charging
- Remote GPU OC in addition to remote CPU OC through the ROG software
That's about what I could figure out at this point of time and maybe there are a few more differences which I may find and I will add it to the list. The majority of the changes are to the VRM side of the board, which is one of the most important parts of any motherboard.
Moving on to a proper look at each part of the motherboard:
Lets start with the socket area. The area is clean and does not have any chips or capacitors for the most part. This will greatly help most CPU heatsinks and waterblocks to be easily compatible as well as help extreme benchers who like to put it under cold. The frame around the CPU is now a two part affair as compared to the older single piece, but it in no way changes the socket mounting in any way. I guess its just done to add some differentiation from the older AM3 boards. The heatsinks by themselves are quite beefy and do a good job of covering the VRM's as well as the NB AND is setup in such a way that the first PCIE slot is free from any protrusions. The mounting system on the heatsinks is a lot better than what it was on the CH IV and I will show you a few shots of that as well. On the right side of the photo above you can see the 8 Pin and an additional 4 Pin connector. The additional 4 Pin is for those that use extreme cooling and this additional 4 Pin brings in the extra power to satisfy the higher power demand. Till now, under water I have not found any use for it, so its mainly for use under LN2 or Dice.
At the bottom right of the picture you can also see the points where the actual voltages can be checked using a Multimeter.
As discussed above, the VRM and NB heatsinks are a much better affair now and you can see that the thermal pads have great contact between the VRM's and the heatsinks. The screws used are a lot more sturdy as well and they hold a set of aluminium plates at the bottom which help to cool the FET's there as well. But my favoutite part would have to be the ROG "Eye", which is the RED part of the heatsink.
Moving on, we see the USB 3 connectors for the front panel placed just below the 24 pin connector. I dont see that as much of an issue and should not make a difference to cable routing, though keeping it at the bottom with the rest of the front panel connectors would have probably made more sense.
Looking at the top rear of the board, you can see the ROG connect on/off switch, which to me is in a place which is not easily accessible. It would have been better to have this switch near the 24 pin or on the rear panel area. We also see a 4 PIN molex connection, which can be used to provide extra power to the PCIE solts for Crossfire/SLI setups. Now this was something that could and should have been moved near the 24 pin or the bottom of the board, to air cable management.
Moving on to the other side of the top area, we can see all the voltage checking area as well as the Go Button. The Go button helps to stabilise your ram and its a great feature specially on AMD as most ram kits are optimised for Intel.
Moving on to the bottom of the board, we have the SB heatsink with the ROG logo on it and its a more subdued version of the CH IV one. Rigt below the heatsink we have the ROG chipsets as well as the removable Bios chip. We can also see the Esata port as well as two 4 pin fan connectors. To anyone who has not used the CH IV or most of the newer ROG boards, all the fan connectors are 4 pin and PWN enabled.
Moving on the center of the bottom part of the board has the ROG buttons, with a Power, Reset and an OC button:
Along with that we see one more 4 pin fan connector as well as a 2 pin temperature probe connector. The board has a number of temperature probes and can be used with most thrid party probes to show the temperature of various locations on the board. I am using one of these to monitor the water temperature on my loop.
The PCIE slot layout is very similar to the old CH IV and I think it works well enough. The first and third slots do 16x in Crossfire/SLI and 2nd and 4th slots run at 8X each. There is a single PCI slot for use with some older hardware like sound cards or wifi modules.
At the left side of the board we have the Supreme X-Fi chip, which is in charge of onboard audio. The chip supports EAX Advanced HD 5.0, THX True Studio Pro, X-Fi Extreme Fidelity and Creative Alchemy. Most of this is just jargon for me, but some of the ausio enthusiasts on the forum may be able to understand and explain it better, so I will leave that to them.
Finally we see the rear I/O side of the board:
The rear has the normal setup, with 4 USB 3 ports, 7 USB 2 ports including a white one for the ROG connect, audio ports and a Clear Cmos port. The one thing I have liked on all ROG boards is the clear Cmos port easily accessible in the rear panel. This helps a lot while setting up ram and benching and is a 100 times easier to use than moving pins around.
That ends this part of the review and the next post will have an in depth look at the UEFI Bios, which I must say is a lot of fun to play with.
