It would appear that we are getting close to the release of the new ASUS Crosshair IV Extreme motherboard, the next iteration of the ROG series from ASUS that promises to bring the ultimate enthusiast platform to the AMD-based user.  We don’t have a whole lot of details yet but we know that it is using the new AMD 890FX chipset along with some iteration of the Lucid HYDRA vendor-agnostic multi-GPU technology that we have only previously seen in MSI’s Big Bang Fuzion motherboard. 

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We were able to get a handful of shots of the upcoming board that we first spotted at the OC Summit overclocking competition and the Crosshair IV Extreme looks like a beast!  There are five (yes 5!) full length PCIe slots and a single legacy PCI slot for those of us still living in the stone age.  The bright red accents definitely add to the visual appeal of the board.

ASUS Crosshair IV will include Lucid HYDRA Technology, AMD CPUs - Motherboards 7

Here you can see some of the ASUS features like the iROG controller, dual BIOS chips, etc.

ASUS Crosshair IV will include Lucid HYDRA Technology, AMD CPUs - Motherboards 8

Up near the memory slots you will see a handful of buttons including the power and reset switches as well as a core unlock button (to help users move from dual/triple-core processors to quad-core parts) and an automatic overclocking switch.  The seven connectors here are for specific voltage monitoring for overclocking.

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In this image we see the connection for ROG Connect and RC Bluetooth – both ASUS exclusive features that allow users to monitor and even change BIOS settings remotely on a secondary PC or laptop.  The benefits are plentiful with this configuration and includes the ability to change settings while in Windows or when you don’t have physical access to the buttons on the board. 

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Finally, here is the money shot of the Lucid HYDRA chip and the AMD south bridge.  This will likely be the first AMD-based motherboard to integrate the multi-GPU technology and even though we still believe that HYDRA needs a lot of work to be truly the great user experience we are hopeful it can become, it is exciting to see another motherboard manufacturer sign on and should give Lucid more life and initiative to get things fixed!