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so today I'll be having a look at a motherboard from ASUS this is the m4a 79

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xtd Evo so this is part of their Extreme

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Design philosophy of motherboard building so let's have a quick look at

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what all of that means Extreme Design means that they're going for number one

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performance number one reliability and number one safety so safety refers to

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things like uh low Emi so that's electromagnetic interference emissions

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okay it's got instant performance up with the turbo key so that's how they're

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achieving their number one performance goal and the number one reliability is

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achieved using extreme durable solid capacitors as well as stat cool 3 so

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stat cool 3 puts a whole lot of copper in the PCB which enables heat to be

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dissipated more evenly not just by the heat sinks attached but also by the PCB

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of the motherboard itself now this is a 790 X chipset board which means we've

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got support for Crossfire up to quad Crossfire X we have support for fenom

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2x3 and fenom 2x4 also with a BIOS update you have full support for AMD's

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latest Phenom 2x6 processors it features

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Express gate which is an instanton feature that enables you to access games

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productivity and internet no no no no that's something else unrelated it

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allows you to access Skype and internet browser some basic stuff without

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actually booting up into Windows 7 which it is completely ready for as you can

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see from the sticker there okay moving around to the back of the box we've got

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a whole big old list of stuff that it

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does so DDR 31800 with overclocking 8

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plus2 phase power we've got a whole lot of other stuff here 8 channel audio

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stylish heat SN they actually call that out right on the box which I agree with

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by the way turbo key anti- surge protection that's kind of neat okay so

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moving around here what do we got we got the new gen A+ two phase power and I

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wish I could get the lighting just right here so you could read that oh that's

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not so that there we go okay so 6 plus2 phase power breakthrough power design to

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fully unleash CPU potential okay then we have epu which is system level Energy

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Efficiency so that's an actual chip on the motherboard that takes care of

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making sure that your system is staying as efficient as possible and then turbo

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V easy real time overclocking tuning

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tunings well whatever they were close

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Okay so let's open up this box and have a look at what we find inside first

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thing I find is the Q connector so you can use that to inst stall all of your

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front panel case connectors on and then you can plug the whole brick right into

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your motherboard very convenient then we have a users manual and okay so user

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guide which contains a drivers and utilities DVD don't use that download

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the latest off Theus website I'm starting to sound like a broken record saying that maybe I'll stop no I won't

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okay so in here this is all English contains information about ASUS's

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software qan as well as their other stuff how to create a raid volume uh how

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to install all of your Hardware on the motherboard very nice thank youus then

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we have an IO Shield it's not color coded just this plain silver one but it

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does have their their mushy uh back plate cover then we have four say to two

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cables so these are two right angle and two straight cables which I will allow

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you to see by holding them up here there we go then we have one IDE cable all

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right it's black matches all right let's get the

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motherboard out of the box and the first thing I notice about it is definitely

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the stylish heat sinks that is for sure

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now this is a little bit different than the heat sinks that I've seen on any of

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the isus motherboards that I have previously unboxed and it's not quite

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their Fortress of Solitude style nor is it their uh their their new sort of more

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uh more angular style that you see on the Republic of Gamers boards but this

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is more like a wavy design so I don't know how well you can see that there you

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go and so the uh the North bridge is quite similar and it's actually like a

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two-tone color scheme so you can see there's like a black base and then kind

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of a wavy blue part that comes out very unique looking um like to see a black

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PCB that always sort of makes a build look more sharp very nice all right so

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let's start with the basic features you got an am3 socket with support for dual

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Channel DDR3 that's fairly standard that's what you expect up at the top

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you've got a four pin CPU power connector right where it belongs top

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left over on the right you've got a 24 pin power connector again right where it

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belongs then let's move around to you know what I'm just going to like stand

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here in front of the camera it's a little bit easier on uh on my

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positioning okay so there's nothing else uh really all that interesting up on the

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top this does not feature the memo K button but I mean really DDR3

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compatibility is so good these days with all the platforms that I've played with

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you don't have to worry too much about it we've got one IDE port here as well

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as uh wow a multitude of SATA ports

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so okay these four are going to be running off of the chipset and then

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these three are going to be running off of somewhere else unless there are six

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running off of the chipset you know what I'm not going to guess we're going to

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have 1 2 3 4 5 6 seven SATA two ports

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down here in the bottom left you can see that these two are on a right angle so

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this is sort of the ideal configuration in my mind but I can see why ASUS didn't

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worry about making all these one's right angle because your PCI Express slots are

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positioned quite high up on the board so even if you have a dual slot card

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installed here it's not going to interfere with the SATA port so it's not

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that big of a deal next here we've got our USB 2.0 front panel connectors and

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then we have a FireWire front panel connector now this is an odd one I don't

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remember a time that I've seen a uh the

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a front header so start reset uh hard drive LED power LED I don't remember a

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time that I've seen it here here on an ASUS board very odd normally ASUS puts

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it right here and it's sort of always there here we've got the chassis

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intrusion detection as well as an overvolt CPU jumper then we have our

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front panel audio and its ideal location then okay PCI Express expansion slots we

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have two PCIe 16 supporting Crossfire X

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if you install two dual Slot Cards you're going to end up with one PCIe 1X

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and one PCI slot that is definitely the ideal um configuration for those slots

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moving up here we have a com header okay it's pretty nice then we move around to

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the back of the board where we find the I/O for the back panel two PS2 ports I

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personally still like to see these on a board they don't take up that much space

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although some people complain about it then we have 1 2 3 4 5 6 78 USB 2.0

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ports no support for USB 3.0 but this is a fairly budget oriented board it's like

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a budget gaming platform so it looks good performs good but you're missing

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some of the Frills and gimmicks then we have optical audio out sat which is

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really nice to see fire wire gigabit Ethernet as well as 7.1 audio thank you

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for checking out my unboxing and first look at the m4a 79 xtd Evo