With the existence of the IDE port this does mean there are less SATA ports but there are still an abundance of this type of port right next to the Southbridge heatsink. The Southbridge hosts the newly embraced SATA 6G, so those with 6G ready HDDs we will be able to take advantage of that extra bandwidth.





As you might agree, the heatsinks covering the VRM region are seriously stocky. If size is anything to go by then the heatsinks sitting here will provide some significant cooling.
Moving to the two switches beside the DDR3 lanes, these two switches manage the Core Unlocker and Turbo Key II features.



With the Core Unlocker technology, you are able to unlock hidden CPU cores and CPU cache inside the AMD CPU. There is no background knowledge needed for this feature, it simple scans through and detects any hidden cores, unleashing even more performance for your CPU and system.

The Turbo Key II feature allows you to tune your CPU to extreme levels of performance, whilst remaining stable. This takes away the hassle of having to tweak settings and enter the BIOS. Perfect for the beginner overclocker or even those who want to get extra performance but aren’t sure about how to go about it.





On the back panel there are quite a lot of features -

1 x S/PDIF Out (Optical)
1 x IEEE 1394a
1 x LAN(RJ45) port
8 x USB 2.0/1.1
8 - Channel Audio I/O
1 x PS/2 Keyboard port (Purple)
1 x PS/2 mouse port (Green)
1 x Clear CMOS button
1 x Power eSATA port

The CMOS button is especially useful, it saves you time having to remove side panels and get inside to clear settings should an overclock fail. All you have to do is press in the button by the PS2 sockets. It's quite odd to see PS2 sockets on motherboards thesedays, again - as with the IDE decision on this board I think the PS2 should be replaced. It's rarely used due to USB taking over.