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To the left we spot four SATA2 connectors and then four SATA3 (6G) connectors, the beige ones come from the P67 chipset whereas the grey ones lead to an extra Marvell 88SE9128 6G controller.

There is yet another controller to be found on the mobo, a JMicron JMB362 IC for back panel (power) eSATA ports. The green connector next to it is a USB 3.0 header. Unfortunately ASUS does not supply a frontpanel USB 3.0 bracket or anything. So at maximum you'll find the two USB 3.0 ports at the rear IO.

We just have to acknowledge it, the board has a unique design alright, but you need to really like it, there's nothing in-between. When we flip the board around once more we spot low level connectivity like extra USB 2.0, audio frontpanel headers and so on. What I kind of miss are power/reset and a clear CMOS button.

Audio is handled by Realtek's 892 codec allowing 8 channels of audio, pretty much the standard norm these days on motherboards. We would like to see some more development done on the audio side of motherboards. The Realtek CODEC is good, but could be so much better. Anyways, let's perform some actual tests.