Overview
The PCB on the P8Z77-V PRO is black. Measuring at 12 inch x 9.6 inch (30.5 cm x 24.4 cm), it conforms to the ATX specification. Board accents are blue, white, and black.

At the top left of the board you’re presented with a stylish blue set of VRM heatsinks. Underneath these heatsinks is a 12+1+1+4 VRM design (12 for the CPU, 1 each for the CPU VTT and VSA, and 4 for the iGPU.) Between these two heatsinks is your 8-Pin CPU power connector (aka EPS.) Beneath the rightmost heatsink there is a 4-Pin case fan header. Above the topmost heatsink are two 4-Pin CPU fan headers. In the middle of all this is the CPU socket. The Z77 Chipset is a socket 1155 technology, which means it supports both the current generation Ivy Bridge, and its predecessor, Sandy Bridge.

To the right of the CPU socket are 4 RAM DIMM slots. Each slot supports up to 8GB of memory, resulting in a combined maximum of 32GB. The Z77 chipset supports 1600 Mhz RAM natively, and anything beyond is considered an overclock. The P8Z77-V PRO supports overclocked RAM up to 2600 Mhz. Moving down the side of the board there’s a 24 Pin ATX power connector. Above this is a unique ASUS feature; MemOK! – this technology will auto-tune memory if it is causing a problem when trying to boot your board, allowing you to reach your BIOS to tweak your setting for a more permanent solution. Beneath the 24 Pin connector there are two more 4 Pin case fan connectors, and a front panel USB 3.0 header (controlled by Z77 chipset.)

Next up, there are eight SATA ports. The blue ports are SATA II, and are controlled by the Z77 Chipset. The white ports are SATA III, also controlled by the Z77 chipset. The dark blue ports are SATA III, controlled by a separate ASMedia controller. Beneath these ports are two switches; EPU and TPU. The EPU switch enables (or of course disables) the power saving features on the board, whilst the TPU switch enables (or again, disables) automatic overclocking.

Now for the bottom of the board. From right to left you have: thunderbolt header (which will enable the use of a Thunderbolt add-in card – very few other manufacturers have this), clear CMOS jumper, front panel I/O, 4 Pin case fan header, USB 2.0 internal header, USB BIOS flashback button, three more USB 2.0 internal headers, a second USB 3.0 internal header (controlled by separate ASMedia controller,) front panel audio, and SPDIF out.

Above all these are two PCI-E 3.0 slots (x16/0 or x8/x8), 1 PCI-E 2.0 slot (x4), 2x PCI-E x1 slots, and a legacy PCI slot. To the left of here is the motherboards audio section; using a Realtek ALC892 chip, the P8Z77-V PRO supports DTS Connect and DTS Ultra PC II.

As far as the I/O panel is concerned, from left to right there are two USB 3.0 ports (controlled by a separate ASMedia controller,) two USB 2.0 ports, one optical port, one HDMI port, one DisplayPort, one VGA, one DVI-I, two USB 3.0 ports (controlled by the Z77 chipset,) other Intel Gigabit ethernet port, and 6 audio ports. Between the USB 2.0 ports and the display connections, there is a space for ASUS’ Wi-Fi GO! peripheral, which they provide with the board.