ASUS Rampage III Extreme Motherboard

Voltage Regulator

ASUS Crosshair IV Formula comes with an 11-phase voltage regulator circuit. From the 11 available phases, eight are used to generate the CPU main voltage (VCC) while the other two are used to generate the voltage required by the integrated memory controller and L3 memory cache (VTT). Thus this motherboard has a “8+3” configuration. It also comes with a three-phase circuit for north bridge chip and another three-phase one for the memory modules.

This motherboard comes with a passive heatsink installed on top of the transistors of the voltage regulator circuit, connected to the passive heatsink that is installed on top of the north bridge chip using a heatpipe, which is also connected to the heatsink of the south bridge chip. In Figure 7, you can see the voltage regulator circuit.

The reviewed motherboard has holes that makes it compatible with socket LGA775 coolers.

Figure 7: Voltage regulator circuit.

As mentioned earlier, all capacitors used on this motherboard are solid made in Japan and the voltage regulator circuit uses ferrite chokes, which are better than iron chokes. Please read our Everything You Need to Know About the Motherboard Voltage Regulator tutorial for more information.