Looking at the top section of the board, you can see the AM3+ CPU socket has plenty of clearance so there shouldn’t be any problems with CPU coolers fitting. There is a digital 8+2 power phase design and a CeraM!X coating on part of the VRM heatsink. This is to aid heat dissipation as it gives a larger surface area.




The CPU socket itself is a normal AM3+ design and there is also plenty of clearance for the PCI-E slots with no interference from the memory slots.




Similar to all other 990FX boards, the SABERTOOTH sports 4x DDR3 DIMM slots but it does have 3x4-pin fan connectors and one 3-pin connector in this area. This is useful in cases that have a lot of exhaust fans near the top. There is also a MemOK! button that assists in memory compatibility as seen on the ASUS Crosshair line of motherboards. This board differs to the new Crosshair V, but offers the same basic functions. We’ll see how they compare on performance soon.




The board comes with 6x SATA III ports, all provided by the AMD SB950 southbridge, which are capable of RAID 0, 1, 0+1, JBOD, and RAID 5. There is also an additional SATA controller provided by JMicron (JMB362) that gives two more SATA ports (SATA II, 3Gbps) and one power eSATA, and one eSATA on the rear IO panel.




Moving down towards the bottom of the board, we can see the AMD southbridge and front panel connectors. There is a USB3.0 front connector for new cases that support nice (a nice addition), and you can also see the usual array of front panel connectors along the bottom, such as USB2.0 ports. There is also a large green, fairly old style LED that illuminates when the board is receiving power from the ATX connectors. Useful to see whether it’s on or not and possibly troubleshoot power supply issues. There is no LED/LCD POST code system as seen on the ASRock 990FX Professional or Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7, but it would seem against the ethic of this design, as well as adding to the cost. There are however, red LEDs placed across the board that light when the machine is POSTing that can give some information should there be an issue.




The whole bottom of the board can be seen below. One omission that was immediately noticed, especially when using the board on a test bench, is the option to power the board up and reset with onboard buttons. Instead you’ll have to connect the power switch as usual, as you would in a normal case. This adds to the evidence that ASUS is marketing this board to a different type of user compared to their traditional high end boards, such as the Crosshair series. This is for someone who wants a solid but functional motherboard that will last a long time. It’s not for extreme overclockers and people who enjoy benchmarking regularly. Will this hamper the performance? Read on to find out.




There are plenty of options for multi-GPU configurations with both quad-GPU SLI and Crossfire being supported. There are 3x PCI-E 16x ports that support dual 16x/16x if you use two, and 16x/8x/8x if you’re using all three. In addition to this, there is also a PCI-E 16x length port that is wired for 4x speeds (black) and a small PCI-E x1 port. There is also a legacy PCI port, which is useful for devices such as sound cards and TV tuners that a user may want to keep when changing their motherboard. You’ll also notice another two 4-pin fan headers near the top most PCI-E slot.




The IO panel connectivity is not likely to let you down either. A good amount of ports cater, again, for almost any user. From top left to bottom right:
• PS/2 mouse/keyboard
• 2x USB2.0
• SPDIF digital audio
• 2x USB2.0
• Firewire
• Powered eSATA
• 2x USB3.0
• 2x USB2.0
• eSATA
• 2x USB2.0
• Gigabit Ethernet (Realtek 8111E)
• 2x USB2.0
• 7.1 analogue audio (Realtek ALC892)