Overview
The M4A88TD-M/USB3 is of course a mATX board so it is much smaller than your normal motherboard. The actual size is 9.6-inch x 9.6-inch, so make sure you have a case that will support it. ASUS has gone with their black / brown PCB and blue accents on everything else. This makes for a pretty cool looking motherboard.
This is an AMD board so the CPU socket has the AMD retention bracket on it. This board supports socket AM3 processors including the 6-core Phenom II X6. Moving down from the CPU socket you have 4 DDR3 DIMM slots; 2 blue and 2 black. These slots support up to 16GB of DDR 3. Next to those you have your power connector and a single IDE connector. You will also notice a small Mem OK! button that will help you get the board posted if you are having memory issues.
Moving down towards the bottom of the board you have 6 SATA 6GB/s ports. Very interesting to see all of the SATA ports be SATA 6GB/s. You will also notice the system panel connector; ASUS of course uses the Q-Connector to make connecting everything easier. Moving along the bottom of the board you have 4 USB connectors, giving you a total of 8 USB ports. You will also notice the small Core Unlocker switch. ASUS’s Core Unlocker simplifies the activation of a latent AMD® CPU—with just a simple switch. Enjoy an instant performance boost by simply unlocking the extra cores, without performing complicated BIOS changes. Even though this board has integrated Radeon HD 4250 graphics it has one 16x PCI-Express slot, two 1x PCI-Express slots and a single PCI slot.
Looking at the back panel I/O connectors on the back you have a single PS/2 keyboard / mouse combo port, 2 USB 2.0 ports, S/PDIF out, HDMI out, VGA out, DVI out, 2 x USB 3.0 ports, Ethernet port, 2 more USB 2.0 ports, and 8-channel audio. I like that the HDMI out is on this board. That makes it perfect for a home theater PC build because you can do audio and video all through one cable and all new TV’s have HDMI inputs.
