This is really a slick little motherboard. Has more features than I needed, but definitely had all the features that I was looking for. Supports the i7 quad core CPU that I had, running at 4Ghz. The CPU has 16 PCIe lanes, and the on board chipset has 20 more, giving me a total of 36 lanes. I needed 16 for my Nvidia GTX1080 card, and 4 more for the M.2 hard drive that I used. The rest are for the future. Leaving me 16 more lanes. That is a lot of PCIe power.
I have 16GB of 2133Mhz DDR4 memory in this. It is just blazing fast.
As mentioned above, this thing has two M.2 hard drive slots between the x16 PCI slots, giving you the ability to use the latest in flash hard drive technology. These slots give the drive x4 PCIe throughput, and I am seeing 3.2GB/s write speed and 2GB/s write speed on my 512GB drive. That is crazy fast, much faster than the throughput of the best SATA/SAS in RAID.
As for connectors, it has more than you could ask for. It has HDMI for the onboard video card in the CPU, however, I don't use this. But, for USB, it has TONS. It has USB2.0/3.0/3.1 USB Type C, and some other USB for direct access to some A2D converter? That is just on the back panel. Then, the motherboard has more USB connectors for the front of your case.
It has 3 SATA Express ports on the back, and 6 SATA ports inside. That is more than you should ever need, and supports hardware RAID for the SATA and the M.2 drives.
It has 2 channels of DDR memory, with two slots each, giving you incredible throughput. It has 7.1 channel surround sound, too. For a middle level motherboard they really packed it with features.
One more cool thing to mention is the LED coloring on the motherboard. Around the edges are LEDs that I assume can be controlled. They just happen to match the color and pattern scheme that I am already using, so I didn't change them. It looks really slick. I have it sync'd to my liquid cooler, video card, and case. My computer looks like a work of art.
PROS: This has pretty much every connection you could want, and many of each. Has support for SLI, all different types of USB, including the new Type C. Has tons of SATA including hardware raid. But, the best is the 36 lanes of PCIe when paired with the CPU. Plus, the two M.2 hard drive connectors give you mind blowing hard drive performance. My windows computer boots to password, after the BIOS screen, in 3.5 seconds. After the password I have full control of the machine, with no hourglass, after another 2-2.5 seconds. That is a cold boot, not a restore from sleep.
CONS: What can I say? It has everything I need. Maybe it would be nice to have more RAM slots, but I believe it is limited by the CPU/Chipset. Really I have nothing bad I can say about this motherboard.
| RAM | DDR4 |
|---|---|
| Memory Speed | 2133 MHz |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 4 |
