M4A79XTD EVO uses an eight-phase voltage regulator (plus two phases for the memory controller) using ferrite chokes, with the transistors using the passive heatsinks already shown on the first page. Read our Everything You Need to Know About the Motherboard Voltage Regulator Circuit to understand why this is a terrific configuration.

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Figure 8: High-end voltage regulator.

This motherboard has a unique feature, an over voltage/under voltage protection circuit, that prevents the motherboard and CPU from being fried if for some reason the power supply goes bad and starts feeding the motherboard with wrong voltages. This feature, however, comes disabled by default and you have to enable it through an option called “Anti Surgy Support” on the BIOS setup.

One small problem from this motherboard is that it uses an ATX12V connector without supporting EPS12V. As you can see in Figure 9, on the left side of this connector we have one of the chokes from the voltage regulator circuit and on the right side we have one of the pegs that holds the passive heatsink from the voltage regulator; this configuration prevents you from installing an EPS12V connector on this ATX12V connector. This way when buying this motherboard make sure to pick a power supply that has an ATX12V connector (almost all power supplies will have, but some very high-end models only feature an EPS12V connector).

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Figure 9: ATX12V connector not supporting EPS12V.

Like other motherboards from ASUS, this one features Express Gate, an operating system stored inside the motherboard read-only memory that allows you to access the Internet without needing to load the operating system or even without having a hard disk drive installed.

In Figure 10, you can see all the accessories that come with ASUS M4A79XTD EVO.

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Figure 10: Accessories.