M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 Motherboard Overview
When you first unpack the board you notice that it is very aesthetically pleasing. The PCB is colored dark brown and the rest of the board has dark blue, light blue and white accents. It is definitely a good looking board. As I said this is a budget board, but you really can not tell that it is by looking at the board. The only way you can tell is that there are only 2 PCI-E slots. Budget boards carry a lot of PCI slots to accommodate your older hardware.
Starting towards the top of the board we can see the M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 uses an 8+2 phase power design. The +2 is actually dedicated to the integrated memory controller and HT bus. This is great for people who want to push their memory to its limits! ASUS uses solid capacitors, which is great to see on a budget board. Above the capacitors and behind a heatsink is the 8-pin CPU power connector. The CPU socket itself is pretty basic, what we are used to seeing.
To the left of the CPU socket are your DDR3 DIMM slots, setup in dual-channel configuration (2 blue 2 black). You can install up to 16GB of memory and this board supports DDR3 800/1066/1333/1600/2000. The 1600 and 2000 memory speeds can be achieved from overclocking in the BIOS. Over from the DDR3 slots in the 24-pin ATX power connector. The MemOK button is located right next to the power connector, this button allows your system to boot even if there is memory compatibility issues. Next to the MemOK button is the Core Unlocker switch and the Turbo Key II switch. Moving down the board you have 5 SATA 6GB/s ports and a single IDE connector.
Along the bottom of the board you have the front panel connector, firewire connector and 4 USB 2.0 connectors. There are 2 PCI-E x16 slots on this board. There are also 3 PCI slots and a single PCI-E x1 slot.
Taking a look at the rear I/O starting from left to right you have a PS/2 keyboard / mouse connector, 2 USB 2.0 ports, optical audio out, HDMI out, VGA out, DVI out, 2 more USB 2.0, firewire, eSATA, Gigabit Ethernet, 2 USB 3.0 ports, and your analog audio connectors.
