Below the southbridge the remaining four SATA 6.0Gb/s sockets are found. This brings the tally up to six which should be plenty for most users. Here you can also see the front panel connector pins that work in conjunction with the ASUS Q-connector.


All six of the 6.0Gb/s capable SATA sockets.

Moving along we reach the four additional USB expansion sockets. With the standard PCI USB breakout plates these connections allow for an additional 8 usb sockets (or certain card readers and other compatible components) to be added to the machine. Also of note in this picture is the boards BIOS battery which nestles nest to the boards two PCI slots.


USB connectivity shouldn't be an issue!

Speaking of PCI slots the M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 is fairly well specced in this regard. Dual PCIe 2.0 16x slots allow for multiple GPU installs although the speed of the slots drops to 8x in this configuration. A single card can be used in the lower (blue) PCIe 16x slot and through the use of the supplied VGA switch card (seen in the accessories picture earlier) can run at the full 16x speed. As you can see there are additional 4x and 1x PCIe slots and two standard PCI slots in place too so there's a decent level of possible hardware flexibility with this board.


The M4A89GTD PRO/USB3's PCIe and PCI connectivity.

Above the PCI expansion slots we find the M4A89GTD PRO/USB3's northbridge heatsink. It's quite a compact design but works in conjunction with the much larger MOSFET heatsink via a connecting heatpipe to further aid cooling.


The 890GX's northbridge heatsink.

This assembly surrounds the AM3 socket and is mighty imposing - however, it is low profile enough to not foul the install of larger 'performance' heatsinks.


The MOSFET and northbridge heatsink surrounds the AM3 socket.

You can see here how the ASUS designers have had to extend the height of the 12v connector to allow for easy cable installation.


Super tall 12v connector.

In fact from another angle you can see how large the MOSFET sink really is. It's complex tree like structure should mean there's a great deal of surface area in play to aid cooling. Add to this the fact that it's virtually as tall as the tallest components on the I/O plate and we'll hopefully find it does well.


The monster MOSFET heatsink on the M4A89GTD PRO/USB3.

The I/O plate shows us again that the M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 means business. From the left we have the keyboard PS2 socket, two USB 2.0 ports, an optical digital port, HDMI, D-Sub, DVI-D, another 2 USB 2.0 ports, firewire, eSATA, gigabit lan, two USB 3.0 ports and a standard collection of 8 channel audio output sockets. That is one seriously crammed backplate and with the ability to add a further eight USB 2.0 ports to the PC it's installed in i'm very impressed.


The connectivity offered by the boards I/O section is excellent.