ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO Motherboard review :: Bundle

4-pin power

MOSFET heatsink

Northbridge top

Northbridge side view

Starting with the upper right hand corner we find the 8-pin power connector. Some of the P55 chipset manufacturers use 4-pin power on their boards but GIGABYTE has decided to go the tried and true 8-pin power route. Below the 8-pin power connector is the MOSFET heatsink. This is connected to another MOSFET heatsink via a heatpipe. Under the MOSFETs is the VRM power circuitry.

CPU Socket

CPU area

Back of board

DIMM Sockets

The CPU area is relatively clear of obstacles to installing an after-market CPU cooler. Low-profile VRM and Solid capacitors line up against the CPU Socket. One thing should be said about ASUS. They qualify their capacitors to 5000 hours, with the caveat that the heat for that length is 105 degrees Celsius which is far above normal operating temperatures. Below the CPU Socket are four DIMM Sockets for up to 16GB of DDR3-1800MHz memory. Note that due to the fact the AM3 CPU has the memory controller on die and not on the motherboard; this speed can only be achieved through overclocking the CPU. The Socket AM3 CPU natively supports DDR3-1333MHz, but of course there is much faster memory modules out there.

24-pin power

SB710

Chassis fan

CPU Fan

The bottom of the board starts out with a 24-pin power connector. This followed by the SATA ports, then the SB710 Southbridge. The SB710 is a less expensive version of the SB750 that is found on many AMD 790FX boards but is missing RAID 5 support which isn’t that important on the consumer side of things. The SB710 features support for Advanced Clock Calibration for enhanced CPU overclocking.

FP I/O

USB Headers

IEE1394

LPT

To the left of the SB710 chip is a Primary IDE connector followed by the battery. The FP I/O on the board is labeled on the left side of the board. ASUS uses something called the Q-Connector to connect the FP I/O on the board in one fell swoop. Three USB headers are present on the board, meaning the total supported on the M4A785TD-V EVO is 12+1 Combo port when considering the total on the board.

SPDIF

AAFP

VIA VT6308

SATA

To the left of the USB ports is an IEEE-1394 header followed by a LPT header. A SPDIF Out header is next followed by the AAFP header. The top of the board has a COM1 port for legacy COM devices. The CPU Fan header is on the bottom right hand side of the board. The board also has a Chassis fan header above the SATA ports and another Chassis Fan header on the top of the board next to the MOSFET heatsink. There are five SATA ports on the board right under the first PCI Express slot. These are vertical to the board but do not hinder installation of long video cards as they are on the right side of the slot and a HD 5870 fits nicely in the first slot without issue. There is a IDE port on the board that is controlled by the SB710 chipset which also controls the SATA ports and an external SATA port. SB710 supports RAID 0, 1, 10 and JBOD.

Expansion

PCI Express locks

SidePort

ITE chip

Expansion on the board is rather interesting as the board has two PCI Express x16 slots. The blue slot is a full-fledged x16 slot with the full bandwidth that offers. The grey slot is a electrically wired x4 slot as the 785G chipset only offers 20 total PCI Express lanes, this means that ATI’s CrossfireX is not available to this board. A PCI Express x1 slot and three PCI slots brings the total slots to six.

VIA VT1708S

EPU

Realtek RTL8112L LAN Chip

COM port

Onboard sound is provided by a VIA VT1708S 8-Channlel High Definition Audio CODEC. It supports Jack Detection, Multi-Streaming and Front Panel Jack Retasking. Optical S/PDIF Out ports are on the back I/O. Multi-Streaming means that the sound can be output via both a 7.1 Surround Sound solution and a 2-channel FP Audio solution simultaneously. The VT1708S CODEC fully supports Microsoft’s High Definition Audio initiative and sufficient for the vast majority of users.

Power circuitry

Clear RTC

Capacitors

Rear I/O

ASUS decided to include the HD4200 integrated graphics with the motherboard. The Rear I/O on the board supports a HDMI output, a DVI-D output, and a D-sub output. You can even install a second D-sub monitor with an adapter. A single PS/2 port, four USB ports, a Firewire port, a S/PDIF out port, a Combo USB/external SATA port, the RJ-45 jack for the onboard LAN, and six audio jacks make up the rest of the Rear I/O on the board.