The Board - Layout

I really love the new look ASUS has here with their Z97 series of products, with more black and a much more subdued golden color to the heatsinks. A value product, the eye-catching black PCB has been replaced with a traditional "brown" version. Thankfully, it does match the rest of the board's esthetics pretty well.


Both the socket's front and back are fairly open, ready for that aftermarket cooler, or Intel's simple "stock" implementation, if that's what you are after.


The ASUS Z97-A has three PCIe x16 slots, two PCIe x1 slots, and a pair of legacy PCI slots. There are four DIMM slots with support for a total of 32 GB at up to 3200 MHz, with an overclock.


The board's bottom edge is full of pins and plugs, among other things; a full compliment to take care of your case and every installed part. There is also a small power switch, so you can easily test the board before installing it, and six 4-pin fan connectors boast pretty fancy speed controls that are available in both the software and the BIOS.


The rear I/O towers come with D-Sub, DVI, LAN, HDMI, and a DisplayPort. USB 2.0, USB 3.0, and the usual analogue- and optical-audio ports also make an appearance. There is even a PS/2 combo port, so you could plug those legacy devices you might still want to use in. The SATA ports include both SATA 6 Gb/s and SATA Express connectivity. You could grab a decent drive now and a great drive in the future, once SATA Express becomes more common. With X99 launched fully, I hope to see many more SATA Express devices soon. There is also an M.2 port, so you get the chance to try out a new drive form factor right away, should you decide to adopt this fairly new tech early.