Typical bright and involving box art from ASUS. As ever it includes all the boards general basic information up front and covers more specific details on the rear. It's a sturdy box too so no need to worry if the courier delivering it to you will damage it!


Box front.


Box rear.

Once open we can see the bundled extras.


Box open.

Here we find a selection of SATA cables, an IDE cable, I/O backplate, the ever present Q-connector for easy front panel connection and a VGA switch card. When installed in the boards upper PCIe 2.0 slot the switch card allows the boards lower PCIe 2.0 slot to run at full 16x speed. Without the card in place both slost run at 8x speed.


Cabling and other extras.

Also included are a Manual, driver and utilities dvd and an ASUS case sticker.


DVD, manual and case sticker.

The board is packed below the additional items and encased in an anti-static bag.


Safely wrapped up!

Once unwrapped you can see that the board itself is an impressive item with the components carrying an attractive white, blue and black theme. Also of note is that this board represents yet another fanless design from ASUS which i always like.


The M4A89GTD PRO/USB3.

The rear of the board is clutter free with only the CPU backplate as a point of interest.


Rear of the board.

Starting at the top of the board we see the four DDR3 DIMM slots. They are fairly tightly packed but i'd imagine only the largest DIMMs (think 'Reaper' style heatpipe models) might have issues during install. Nearby we see the 24pin ATX power connector and a COM port adapter.


DDR3 dimm sockets and 24pin ATX connector.

Just above these two sockets we have the MemOK! button and even further up (close to the board screw mount hole) you can see the two flick switches. These are the Core Unlocker and Turbo Key II switches which i will comment on during my overclocking with the board.


MemOK!, Core Unlocker and Turbo Key II switches.

Moving further down the board we find the obligatory IDE socket sat next to two of the M4A89GTD PRO/USB3's SATA 6.0Gb/s sockets. Yes, it is a but 'Oldschool vs cutting edge' but it's presence is definitely needed since many users still utilise IDE optical drives!


New v old - two SATA 6.0Gb/s next to the IDE socket.

Next to these we find the very compact and low profile Southbridge heatsink. It certainly won't obstruct any larger GPU's but let's hope it cools that SATA 6.0Gb/s chip sufficiently!


The tiny SB850 heatsink.