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 Board  8-pin power  CPU Socket area  CPU area Starting from the upper right corner of the board we find that ASUS has put the 8-pin power connector in a perpendicular position, good for Power Supply cables that come up from the bottom of the case or the top. Below the 8-pin power is the first MOSFET heatsink with a heatpipe leading to the second MOSFET heatsink with another heatpipe leading to the P55 chipset heatsink with a final heatpipe leading to the DualBIOS heatsink  DIMM Sockets  P55 chipset  Dual BIOS heatsink  Back of board The CPU area is clear of obstacles, allowing for easy installation of after-market cooling devices. The CPU Socket comes with a cover that should be replaced onto the Socket when a CPU is not installed on it. Surrounding the CPU Socket is an array of capacitors and 24 PWM switches for the 24 Phase Power on the board. Three additional PWMs are for the CPU Power. The CPU Fan header is below the MOSFET heatsink, followed by the six DIMM sockets for the memory on the board. The LGA-1156 CPU supports dual channel memory meaning you need to install memory in pairs. Single Sided DDR3 memory is supported when all six sockets are filled, while dual-sided DDR3 memory is supported with four Sockets filled.  Power button  24-pin power  Reset switch and LED  CPU Fan header The bottom of the board starts off with a silver Power button which is great for DIYers that require out-of the box installation of the motherboard. This followed by a 24-pin power connector, the SysFan header and the SATA ports. The next item is the Reset switch which is separated from the Power switch followed by a Status LED that lets you know where the likely problem is on a boot.  FP I/O  Reset switch  USB headers  FDD The left side of the board starts off with the FP I/O. This is followed by the Clear CMOS Switch which is again separated from the Power and Reset switches. To the left of the Clear CMOS Switch are two USB 2.0 headers. Note that these are 2.0 USB headers as there are only 2 USB 3.0 headers on the motherboard. Next does a FDD connector for those who still need a FDD then the SYSFAN2 header and a COM port header.  SATA ports  ITE chip  NEC USB controller  Firewire header There are eight SATA connectors on the motherboard. Two of these are color-coded with six SATA2 ports that are blue and two SATA 6 Gb/second ports that are white. The SATA2 ports are controlled by the Intel P55 Express chipset. GIGABYTE has partnered with Marvell using their latest SE9128 controller for SATA 6 Gb/second control. The Marvell chip uses 8 PCI Express lanes from the CPU to provide full-speed access to the SATA 6 Gb/second interface, losing SLI and Crossfire support at full speed.  Texas Instruments chip  MLX chips  Expansion  SLI and CrossfireX logos Expansion on this motherboard is fully featured with three full length PCI Express slots. This is split into a x16 slot, a x8 slot and a x4 slot. Note that when installing a single card use the x16 slot as the x8 and x4 slots allow less bandwidth to the video card. Two cards in SLI or CrossfireX is supported but again note that using the SATA 6 Gb/second ports will disable Crossfire or SLI when fully enabled due to the use of PCI Express lanes from the CPU. Also on the board are two PCI x1 slots and two PCI slots.  ALC889  SysFan header  Realtek driver  Rear I/O Onboard sound is provided by a Realtek ALC889 CODEC. This venerable chipset has been used in many motherboards on the market today including this one. This CODEC supports Multi-Streaming (7.1+2 channel Front Panel Audio simultaneously). It also supports HDCP, has high performance DACs with 108dB SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio), 104dB ADCs and meets Microsoft WLP 3.10 and future WLP audio requirements. The Rear I/O on the board consists of eight USB 2.0 ports, a Keyboard/mouse PS/2 port, SPDIF Out and TOSLink ports, Firewire IEEE1394a and b ports, two Gigabit LAN controllers controlled by Realtek RTL8111D PHYs, two USB 3.0 connectors colored blue and six audio jacks for the onboard audio.  ITE chip  Dolby Home Theater  COMA port  L chip Contents:
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