This motherboard has two 24-pin power supply connectors (see in Figure 4), allowing you to install two power supplies to increase the current delivered to the motherboard – to the video cards, in particular. This product will also require an EPS12V connector and a standard peripheral connector to be installed on the board.

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Figure 4: Two 24-pin power supply connectors.

On this prototype all electrolytic capacitors are solid, as expected on a high-end product, and all coils from the voltage regulator are ferrite coils, which provides a lower power loss compared to the traditional iron coils.

It also has a POST diagnostics display, which allows you to see what is wrong with your computer if it doesn’t turn on through a two-digit code, and on-board reset, power and clear CMOS switches, which is very convenient to overclockers.

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Figure 5: POST display and reset, power and clear CMOS switches.

In Figure 6, you can see the rear panel from this prototype: PS/2 keyboard connector, PS/2 mouse connector, six USB 2.0 ports, two eSATA ports (controlled by a JMicron JMB363 chip), one FireWire port, two Gigabit Ethernet ports (using Broadcom chips) and, of course, the two connectors for the water-cooling system.

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Figure 6: Rear panel.

If you paid close attention to Figure 6 you have noticed that this motherboard has no on-board audio solution. The audio will probably be available through an add-on card that will come with the motherboard, containing the audio codec and the various audio connectors.