Overview
Now it’s time to look at this board from the outside. As you can see the board is all White and Blue with a Black PCB. You can also see that the heatsinks on this ASRock Board are beefed up. You can also see that the board has a ton of SATA ports. Now we will get more into detail.
While looking at the area where the CPU goes you will notice the large mosfets coolers with Extreme and a 4 on the other one located to the top and the left of the CPU. Now underneath the CPU is where they have the motherboard labeled along with logos showing it is SLI and Crossfire ready.
The Southbridge has an aluminum heatsink with fins that help disperse the heat away from the Southbridge. While in the same area you will see the 6 SATA connections, along with the headers to plug in your front USB ports and also the power on and off button. Now along the side you have the Dr. Debug screen which will through up codes if there is something wrong. Then there is a push button to the Computer ON and OFF along with a reset. Built for over-clockers who do not use on and off buttons since there computer is not in a case.
Next we have the back side of the board. On the Back side of the board we have 2x PCIe 2.0 slots for graphics cards along with 3 PCIe 1.0 for add-on cards like Newer soundcards and many other different types of newer devices. At the Bottom you have a header for HD audio to plug your front headphone in and out into, along with floppy port, also with the USB 3.0 header to plug in the front bay device. There is 4 slots for DDR3 memory, to the right of that you have the 24pin motherboard power supply connector with 4xSATA 3 and a 3pin for an internal fan.
On to the Back of the motherboard where the input panel is you will see the round PS/2 connectors for keyboard and mouse. Right next to that you have the clear CMOS so you don’t have to open the case and remove stuff to reset the CMOS in case you have a failed an attempt to overclock or computer won’t boot. You also have 6x USB 2.0 ports, 1 ESATA port, 2 USB 3.0 ports and a 10/100/1000 network port along with 7.1 analog ports for speakers or headsets.
