ASUS M4A79 Deluxe Motherboard Review :: Layout

Starting with the CPU Socket, the CPU area is clear of obstacles, allowing for after-market CPU coolers to be installed. Note that while there are solid capacitors and circuits, these are low-profile, allowing for the cooler to be installed without issue. Surrounding the CPU cooler is a heatsink covering the MOSFETs, with a heat pipe leading to the Northbridge and another heat pipe leading to the Southbridge.

Directly below the CPU Socket are the memory modules. ASUS outfits this board with four DIMM Sockets to support up to 16GB of DDR2-1066MHz memory natively. Note that the AM2+/AM3 CPU limit the memory to one DIMM per channel when DDR2-1066MHz is installed. Also note that Windows 64-bit or Linux is recommended when more than 4GB is installed as the 32-bit OS can only address 4GB maximum.

The board has four PCIe 2.0 x16 slots, supporting ATI's CrossfireX in 2 x16, x16 x8 x8, or x8 x8 x8 x8 mode. ATI allows up to four Radeon cards to be installed on one motherboard to improve performance in games and applications that support it. There's room on the board for up to four dual-slot video cards. Also on the board are two PCI slots bringing the total expansion slots to six.

The SB750 chip controls the five SATA ports on the bottom of the board. Note that two of the SATA ports are sideways oriented. This allows long video cards to be installed on the motherboard without worry as to the length of the cards as the card won't cover the SATA port. Also on the board are an IDE port and a legacy FDD port for those that need a floppy disk. As SATA and USB ports have replaced IDE and FDDs this is an interesting choice.

Onboard audio is provided by a Realtek ALC1200 Audio CODEC. This is a newer CODEC from Realtek that fully supports High Definition Audio standard. The CODEC supports Jack-detection, multi-streaming and Front Jack retasking. One feature of this new CODEC is the ASUS Noise Filtering support. The main difference between the Realtek ALC889A and the ALC1200 is the fact that it does not have any Dolby Digital Live support. It does support DTS Ultra PC.

The rear IO on the board is fairly typical of motherboards on the market today. Present are a PS/2 mouse and PS/2 keyboard port, six USB 2.0 ports, a Firewire port, an external SATA port, six jacks for the onboard audio, Coaxial S/PDIF and Optical S/PDIF out ports. The onboard Gigabit LAN is supported by a single RJ45 LAN port. Note the ubiquitous PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports; I know few if anyone still using a PS/2 mouse. The LAN is controlled by a Realtek 8112 Gigabit LAN controller. The Firewire port is controlled by a VIA VT6315N controller.