The Crosshair III Formula is yet another addition to the Asus Republic of Gamers line-up, but this time it's based around AMD's latest AM3 socket and 790FX chipset, unlike previous Crosshair boards which used Nvidia chipsets. The AMD chipset brings with it DDR3 and Crossfire X support as well as a nice surprise in the shape of a more reasonable price tag.

The third generation of Crosshair motherboards is tidily laid out with plenty of space around the major components despite it being filled to the gunwales with features. There's support for up to 16GB of 1600MHz (via overclocking) DDR3 memory in four DIMM slots, two full speed x16 PCI-E graphics card slots, integrated Gigabit Ethernet, Firewire, e-SATA and five SATA II ports with RAID support.

If you are wondering about the odd number of SATA ports, the answer is quite straightforward: AMD's SB750 Southbridge supports six SATA ports, but as ASUS has built an e-SATA on the rear I/O panel it leaves just five ports to be built onto the board itself.

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One look at that rear I/O panel and you'll notice something is missing: yes, that's right, there are no audio ports. Instead of relying on an integrated solution for the audio, Asus has bundled a reasonably high-end SupremeFX X-Fi audio card which calls the top PCI-E x1 slot home. But don't worry; there are two remaining PCI-E x1 slots for your... erm... oh yes, your TV card, perhaps.

If you are one of those people who like to have power and reset buttons on the motherboard then you'll be quite pleased by the massive red power button and its accompanying black reset button. Next to these sits a useful little 'MemOK' button which loads failsafe memory settings, so if you decide to go mental with overclocking the memory and the board refuses to boot, pushing this button will enable you to get into the BIOS again to calm things down. There is also a handy 'Clear CMOS' button on the rear I/O panel.

As you might expect for a ROG board there is a pretty comprehensive BIOS, so people who like to tinker about with their motherboards are well catered for, and for those taking their first tentative steps into the murky world of overclocking the CPU, Level Up profiles will automatically overclock the processor for you.

A feature that is sometimes overlooked by motherboard manufactures is support for case cooling fans, but that is something no-one can accuse ASUS of with the Crosshair III Formula, as there are no fewer than eight fan headers on the board. All are four-pin, which enables PWM fan control, offering better thermal control of any case fans.

Bundled in the box is a useful little gizmo in the shape of an external LCD Poster, which plugs into the motherboard with a sufficiently long cable to allow the little screen to sit on the top of your PC and display any POST issues in English instead of the usual codes.

If you fancy going down the non-Intel route - and the latest AMD processors do offer a good alternative - then the Asus Crosshair III Formula board is certainly one to add to your list. It offers a good feature set at a decent price point, making it a good basis for a gaming system for the would-be gamer on a relatively limited budget.