The lower M.2 slot's heatsink is simply a large chunk of metal with a thermal pad underneath, but it's clearly more capable than some of the smaller heatsinks we've seen such as the MSI M.2 Shield. It does make installing and removing the SSD a bit of a pain, but there are just three screws to deal with and no shrouds. It's also just about possible to remove the heatsink and SSD with one graphics card installed too.
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It's definitely worth using as well, as temperatures were 17°C cooler with the heatsink - not such a massive drop as we saw with the water-cooled Maximus IX Extreme, but we doubt our Samsung 960 Evo was complaining.
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With heatsink
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Without heatsink
°C (lower is better)
The rear I/O panel isn't particularly lavish for a £300 motherboard, and our Wi-Fi module seemed to be a bit wonky too. You get seven Type-A USB ports in total with one being USB 3.1 and four USB 3.0, plus a USB 3.1 Type-C connector too - all USB 3.1 connectivity comes courtesy of an ASMedia controller. There are the usual eight-channel audio jacks as well that feed off the SupremeFX S1220 Realtek-based audio, to which Asus has added a dual headphone amp and a premium Nichicon capacitors, while a dual-purpose de-pop MOSFET serves to reduce pop noises and detect the impedance of your headset to identify the best amplification level. There's also the usual 120dB SNR on the line-out and 113dB SNR on the line-in.
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There's one less 16x PCI-E slot, with the board favouring x4 slots, with a pair of these along with a single 1x PCI-E slot. As you can see below, there's plenty of room for the top card to breathe if its dual-slot, even with backplates if you decide to go with an SLI or CrossFire setup.
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The latest version of Asus' Aura software is able to control Corsair's Vengeance RGB Memory as well as the onboard LEDs and headers - you can see more in our software section. However, the hologram and I/O shroud lighting does look pretty neat on its own and isn't too garish.
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Specifications
- Chipset Intel X299
- Form factor ATX
- CPU support Intel Socket LGA2066 (Skylake-X)
- Memory support Quad-channel, 4 slots, max 128GB
- Sound SupremeFX eight-channel S1220A Codec
- Networking Intel Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac Wi-Fi
- Ports 2 x M.2 PCI-E 3.0 x4 32Gbps (1 x PCI-E/SATA up to 2280, 1 x PCI-E up to 22110), 8 x SATA 6Gbps, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-A, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 1 x USB 3.1 header, 8 x USB 3.0 (4 via header), 4 x USB 2 ports (2 via header) 1 x LAN, audio out, line in, mic, Optical S/PDIF out
- Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244
- ExtrasVertical M.2 mount, SLI bridge, thermal sensor cables, RGB LED extension cable, 3D printing mount package, isolated audio circuitry, steel-plated PCI-E slots
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