The Motherboard Continued

Moving around the motherboard a bit, we can see our header for power, reset and etc. buttons. Next to that we've got our 24-Pin power connector. Taking up the majority of the motherboard length, we've then got two DDR3 memory slots.

The memory is only single channel and supports speeds natively of 800MHz DDR and 1066MHz DDR. Of course, the ability to install faster modules is an option, but some form of overclocking has to be done to push memory speed above the default ones.

Moving around to the top of the board, we've got a 4-pin power connector and next to that we have a switch that ASUS call "Turbo Key II." What this does is allows you to auto-tune the CPU to enhance system performance. It's really interesting to see companies put a bit of emphasis on overclocking with this platform. Next to the switch we have another USB header; this header does support USB 3.0, though, provided by the NEC chip.

Turning the board over to its side and checking the I/O part of things, we've got from the left, two Wi-Fi Antenna ports, PS/2 combo port, two USB 2.0 ports, HDMI, Optical and DVI-I. Above the DVI-I port you can see we've got part of the heatsink that is designed to let some of the heat be extracted outside the case.

Continuing on, we've got another two USB 2.0 ports, Bluetooth 3.0 header, eSATA 6Gbps port, two USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit networking from the Realtek 8111E chip and three audio jacks.

For such a small board, we've really got a lot going on and it will be interesting to see how the board performs since ASUS have opted for the passive cooling solution.