At the top of the board resides the standard 4-pin ATX 12v connector. Also present is a debug port switch, ASUS' own Turbo Key II for overclocking and a USB header providing two of the board potential 14 USB connections.
4-pin ATX socket and Turbo Key II.
At PCB level it's easy to see the complexity of these super compact motherboards!!!
The wonders of ITX motherboards.
To the right of the heatsink are the dual DDR3 memory slots. These can accept up to 8GB in total (2x4GB dimms) which is certainly more than enough for the average HTPC user. Also in shot is the 24-pin ATX power adapter and just below the heatsink and to the left of the blue DDR3 slot is ASUS' own MemOK! button to help recover the board from a failed overclock state.
DDR3 slots, power connector and MemOK! button.
The boards wireless 802.11n capability is provided courtesy of this laptop style card that resides in a small mini PCIe slot on the board. It's two connection points run to the I/O plate of the board for connection to the supplied aerials.
The 802.11n wireless card.
Next to the wireless card are dual USB headers to allow the connection of a further four USB devices and five of the six SATA 6.0Gbps sockets on the board.
Decent USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0Gbps support.
At the very base of the board we find the PCI-e 16x slot. A side not however - this slot only runs @ 4x speed. As a result of this gaming with higher end cards may result in compromised performance. Not that you'd be using such a card with this set up but thought I'd mention it anyway!
The full length (but only 4x speed!) PCIe slot.
The last notable feature of the board itself are two fan headers located between the I/O plate and heatsink. Now this is designed to operate in a fanless mode but ASUS have kindly included these just in case your cases airflow is severely restricted or if you just felt the need to add a fan. Either way I will be testing the board in both fanless and fan cooled situations.
CPU and chassis fan headers.
At the rear of the board is the I/O plate. It's quite well appointed with dual Wireless N sockets, a PS2 keyboard/mouse socket, a total of 6 USB sockets (4 are USB 2.0 only whilst the two blue sockets are USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 compatible), an HDMI port, optical S/PDIF port, a DVI-I port, an eSATA 6.0Gbps port, an inbuilt Bluetooth 3.0 adapter, gigabit LAN socket and three audio jack points.
I/O plate.
