Technical Details
- AMD Socket AM3+ FX / Phenom II / Athlon II / Sempron 100 Series Processors
- AMD 990FX / SB950 Chipset
- CeraM!X - Premium ceramic-coating technology provides best heat dissipation
- TUF Thermal Radar - Real-time thermal detection with professional user mode for customized settings
- TUF Capacitors, Chokes and MOSFETS - Certified by military standard to ensure ultimate durability
- DIGI+ VRM - New Era of Digital Power Design that fully enables Superior System Stability, High Power Efficiency and Improved Performance Scaling
- Efficient Switching Power (E.S.P) - Higher Power Efficiency; Higher Reliability
Product Description
The TUF Series delivers preeminent stability, all-around compatibility, and extreme durability, providing the most reliable computing experience.
Customer Reviews
By J. S. Green
Overall, I find this board to be very well constructed, simple to install, excellent for overclocking, and very well stocked with I/O options.
I have paired this motherboard with the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Processor. I'm using a Thermaltake VL10001W2Z case and an Antec EA-750 Green power supply. My memory configuration is two Corsair XMS3 8 GB 1333 MHz PC3-10666, for a total of 16Gb.
Pro:
Very simple or very sophisticated overclocking. The basic "turbo" mode in the BIOS setup steps the Phenom II x6 up to 3.8 Ghz, just like that. If one wants to do a lot of overclocking, then the advanced BIOS options allow just about anything. If the overclock doesn't work, the BIOS will let you know after a manual power off. This board is an overclocker's dream. There is also a convenient "clear BIOS" button on the board, in case you REALLY goof it up.
Many of the board components are tested to "MIL SPEC", which means military standards. They will survive higher than normal temperature conditions and still work. Many components are covered with special materials for extra cooling, and metal parts have micro sized distortions (like the dimples on a golf ball), which create more cooling area, and thus better efficiency.
The manual is very good and quite clear. Along these lines, the website has all the drivers, updates, and manuals within easy web browsing.
The board rear output has a single powered (and two non powered) Esata ports, two USB-3, 10 USB 2, a 1394 port, plus the usual sound & etc. There are an additional two USB-3 pins on the motherboard. Internally, it sports 6 600 mb/sec SATA and two 300Mb/sec SATA ports. It comes with 4 SATA cables and a crossfire cable.
The board supports three high speed PCI-e cards.
One really nice feature (for the system builder) is that there is a small removable block containing the pins for power, HDD, etc. One conveniently plugs in the case cables to this block, then slides the block onto the motherboard pins. This makes it a lot easier to connect them.
The bios is visual, and runs a mouse. The "EZ" version has basic settings, while the "Advanced" version offers more choices. One thing that you might note is that if you are upgrading, the board is set by default to ACHI for the SATA, which means that Windows may not boot unless you first set the BIOS to "IDE". For Windows 7 users, there is a way to modify the registry to enable ACHI (google it). This is not important if the previous installation had ACHI.
The board has lights for each of the main functions (memory, bood device, CPU, etc). If for some reason it won't boot, you can look inside and see which light is lit, saving a lot of trouble shooting time.
There are several nice utilities that run under windows (I'm on Win 7 Pro). These allow one to set various settings, and view information about the board status. One valuable display shows the entire motherboard, with temperature colors for critical locations. This would be nice to trouble shoot cooling issues.
In the "way cool" section, the board has utilities that allow one to change the boot image, so you can put your favorite picture up there when the computer starts up.
Con:
I think the BIOS is miscalculating the CPU temperature. The temperature has to be calculated from data provided by the Northbridge chip. I have seen temperatures in the BIOS that exceed the specs for my CPU! I am trusting the ones provided by CoreTemp, which use calculations provided by AMD. I don't know how ASUS calculates the temperatures it reports, but I don't trust the results they present.
Sometimes the BIOS was a bit confusing, but that is mostly because I am used to older BIOS.
The board is designed around the AMD 990 chipset, but they chose to integrate the legacy SATA (two ports on board and the three ESATA ports on the back) via a different chipset from Jmicron inc. It is a bit unusual to see the Jmicron looking for devices on the SATA (it shows up before the AMI bios page). I'm not sure why they did this for the SATA, since the newer 600 mb/sec standard is backwards compatible, but maybe that is just the easiest way for them to do it. Not really a "con", but surprising in such an advanced board.
I have not yet managed to get the AMD "cool n quiet" feature of the Phenom II x6 to work. I suppose there is some way to change the settings to allow it (I have already enabled it in the advanced BIOS), but either my computer is always using the cores, or the motherboard simply isn't invoking it. Actually, this CPU runs cool enough that I may not pursue it further. EDIT: OK, the board utilities indicate that the CPU cores are using Cool N Quiet, but CoreTemp monitoring is not showing it.
The board has a legacy serial connector on the board, but no serial port on the back. There is a mouse port, but if you really need serial (9 pin or other), you will need an adaptor card.
Overall, the board works great out of the box or with modified settings. Recommended.
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