For a couple of years ASUS has been releasing the TUF (The Ultimate Force) series motherboards, which are designed to meet the demands of heavy power users that desire highly stable systems in the most extreme conditions. This line of motherboards goes through more testing than most motherboards, ensuring they can take abuse no matter what environment they are used in. One of the latest motherboards to be added to the TUF series is the Sabertooth 990FX. This AMD based motherboard includes military certified components and a unique heatsink coating technology called CeraM!X.



The promotional image above provides a view of the ASUS Sabertooth 990FX motherboard, which will support all of the latest AMD AM3 and AM3+ processors, including the AMD FX Series CPU up to 8-core. This motherboard also features an internal USB 3.0 connection, Quad-SLI and Quad CrossFirex, and the latest UEFI BIOS. Before taking a closer look at the motherboard provided for review, let's take a look at a little of the published information available on the Sabertooth 990FX. This board has so much to offer it would take pages to cover, so for more details please visit the official product page on the ASUS website.

Features:

» TUF CeraM!X Heatsink Coating Tech. - 50% Larger area for heat dissipation with the revolutionary ceramics-coating technology
» TUF Components (Alloy Choke, Cap. & MOSFET; Certified by Military-standard)
» UEFI BIOS
» DIGI+ VRM - Herald the Arrival of a New Digital Power Design Era
» AI Suite II
» Complete USB 3.0 Solution
» AMD® Socket AM3+ for AMD® FX Series CPU up to 8-core
» Quad-GPU SLI and Quad-GPU CrossFireX Support

Specifications:

» CPU AMD AM3+ FX™/Phenom™ II/Athlon™ II/Sempron™ 100 Series Processors
   Supports AM3+ 32 nm CPU
   Supports CPU up to 8 cores
   Supports CPU up to 140 W
   AMD Cool 'n' Quiet™ Technology
» Chipset AMD 990FX/SB950
» Memory 4 x DIMM, Max. 32GB, DDR3 1866/1600/1333/1066 Hz ECC, Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory Dual Channel Memory Architecture
» Multi-GPU Support
   Supports NVIDIA® Quad-GPU SLI™ Technology
   Supports AMD Quad-GPU CrossFireX™ Technology
» Expansion Slots
   3 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (dual x16 or x16, x8, x8) *1
   1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 mode, black)
   1 x PCIe 2.0 x1
   1 x PCI
» AMD SB950 controller :
   6 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s), brown
   Support Raid 0, 1, 5, 10
» JMicron® JMB362 controller :
   2 x SATA 3Gb/s port(s), black
   1 x Power eSATA 3Gb/s port(s), green
   1 x eSATA 3Gb/s port(s), red
» LAN Realtek® 8111E , 1 x Gigabit LAN Controller(s)
» Audio Realtek® ALC 892 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC
   Supports : Jack-detection, Multi-streaming, Front Panel Jack-retasking
» Audio Feature :
   Absolute Pitch 192kHz/ 24-bit True BD Lossless Sound
   Blu-ray audio layer Content Protection
   ASUS Noise Filter
   Optical S/PDIF out port(s) at back panel
» USB Ports
   ASMedia® USB 3.0 controller :
      4 x USB 3.0 port(s) (2 at back panel, blue, 2 at mid-board)
   AMD SB950 controller :
      14 x USB 2.0 port(s) (10 at back panel, black+red, 4 at mid-board)
» Back I/O Ports
   1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo port(s)
   1 x eSATA 3Gb/s
   1 x Power eSATA 3Gb/s
   1 x IEEE 1394a
   1 x LAN (RJ45) port(s)
   2 x USB 3.0
   10 x USB 2.0
   1 x Optical S/PDIF out
   6 x Audio jack(s)
» BIOS 32 Mb Flash ROM, UEFI BIOS, PnP, DMI2.0, WfM2.0, SM BIOS 2.5, ACPI 2.0a, Multi-language BIOS, ASUS EZ Flash 2
» Manageability WfM 2.0, DMI 2.0, WOL by PME, WOR by PME, PXE