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Thats the question my friends i cant decide. I wanted to build an AMD quadcore system with a phenom II x4 3.4Ghz. First i came across the Crosshair III. It got TONS of awesome revieus. This board was made exactly for the phenom II x4 CPU, People claimed it to be THE BEST AM3 motherboard so far, Many mentioned its great overclocking tools in the bios and tons of emergency protection mechanisms (if you screw up overclocking it will prevent any possible damage it can do to the motherboard) Extremely stable, out of 600something reviews on newegg, only about 10 were bad. I instantly wanted to buy it. I started looking for it on russian market but its hard to find since its already kind of old, and the retailers just dont order them any more. Instead people started reccomending me the crosshair IV instread. I read some things about it but since its new, it didnt get as many revies on it yet but i did read that it has a common defect on the northbridge heatsink not connected well enought causing the NB to overheat. Overall it has more negative reviews than the crohhair III, altho the majority says crosshair IV a good board they dont praise it as much as the crosshair III in terms of the protection features and the overclocking optons. Altho there are a few internet shops In moscow that sellthe crosshair III I am now not sure which one i want. The crosshair IV supports the 6 core AMD and someday i might upgrade to 6 core. The reason i feel sceptical about crosshair IV is its about 250 bucks here and the crosshair III is like 200. i dont feel like paying 50 bucks for something that has a common defect. So anyone here have either of these boards will you share your experience and help me choose?

Well if you are going for the best of the best,go for IV then

i am not sure if IV is better than III, III appers to be more tough and stable but IV supportsthe six core CPU and looks cool

I doubt you will need a six core CPU in the next 3 years. Go for the best one

i wanted to get the crosshair 3 but you can only get it on the internet and i am constantly at work so i have no time to deal with that. i did find the crosshair4 in the electronics market near my work, i ended up bying it and guess what.... Just like everyone else, the northbridge is a little hot. 45-50c. considering the overclocked quadcore i have in there (OCd to 3.6ghz)is only 30c, the northbridge at around 50c is a problem. the soughtbridge is also around 40-45c. the problem with this is the NB screwholders are a little longer than needs to be so the heatsink isnt making any good contact. But i dont hink thats my problem since i reattached the heatsink pretty well and put some fresh thermal grease on it. i just think the entire heatpipe assembly on this is made out of crappy stuff. but it looks pretty. I dont mind getting a better MB heatpipe assembly for this board but they dont sell them seperatly. I will try attaching some thermal pads to the heatsinks to see if it makes it better. Also I have a question. the board says it has high quality solid copasitors that will last 500000 hours at 50c but it says that at 100c they will last only 5000 hours. What are the chances that my coppasitors are gonna run at more than 50c and how can i keep them cooler because i want this motherboard to last me as much as i can since i payed $200+ for it.

Well keeping your PC cooler sure helps extending it's life. If it constantly runs at 100 degrees,your motherboard can go to hell in quite a short time. Try attaching some fans to your bridges too

Holy crap, after i filed down some of the screwholders and put thermal pads, the NB temp rocketed, got to 80c in 10 seconds.

Yeah, i dont think they were thermal pads. got it back to the way it was, SB is around 40-45, and NB is around 50. Putting the fans on the bridges is not an optopn because they will get in the way of the graphics card and if you look up crosshair 4 you will see that there is no way to attach a fan to that heatsink. I really need to find a good way to cool off my bridges orthe motherboard wont last long i already voided its warrany by taking off the heatsink and filing down the screwholders, i might as well make it last as long as possible