ASUS M4N72-E Motherboard Review :: Layout

The motherboard is an ATX sized board meaning it will fit into cases designed for the ATX form factor. Starting at the CPU area, the CPU Socket is clear of obstacles, allowing the installation of most after-market CPU coolers. Below the CPU Socket are four DIMM Sockets allowing for the installation of up to 16GB of DDR2-1066MHz memory. Note that AM3/AM2+ CPUs limit DDR2-1066MHz to one DIMM per channel only.

Expansion on the board consists of 2x PCIe 2.0 x16 slots, two PCIe x1 slots and two PCI 2.2 compliant slots in total. Note that the motherboard has a built-in GeForce 8300 chip to be used only for Hybrid SLI operation. As Hybrid SLI only works with an 8400GS at best it is a forgotten feature as there are no connections for a monitor on the board. When two NVIDIA graphics cards are installed with an SLI bridge the PCI Express slots operate in x8 mode.

The board has six SATA 3.0Gb/second ports for the onboard SATA controller. Note that the location of the ports means that the installation of a long video card like the GeForce GTX285 will not interfere with SATA installation or removal. The ports are to the right of where the first PCI Express x16 is located. An IDE and a FDD port round out the expansion options on the M4N72-E board.

The 24-pin power connector is on the bottom right area of the board, where it should be. The 4-pin power connector is on the right side of the board as it should be. The left side of the board has the Front Panel IO connectors, three USB 2.0 headers and a Firewire header. A COM1 and the HD Audio connections are next to those. Overall, there's not much to complain about on the board's layout.

The onboard audio solution is from VIA, the VIA VT1708S CODEC that supports 7.1+2 channel audio simultaneously, and is an interesting alternative to the Realtek ALC889/1200 we see in most other motherboards on the market today. The VT1708S has the capabilities for ASUS Noise filtering, jack detection, Optical S/PDIF Out ports and is fully compliant with the High Definition Audio standard.

The rear IO on the board consists of a PS/2 Keyboard, Mouse, S/PDIF Out (Optical), IEEE-1394a, a RJ-45 jack, 6 USB 2.0 AND 8-Channel Audio ports. Note that the chipset supports 12 USB ports and with the headers can actually have it assuming you have brackets to install them with. The board's PS/2 mouse port is a bit ubiquitous as most people have migrated to USB mice or wireless mice, but it is there if you need it.