The Basics (continued):

The next image shows the eight SATA ports on the motherboard. The four black ports (SATA II/3Gbps) are capable of RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10. The four red ports (SATA III/6Gbps) are split between the P67 chipset and a Marvell 9182 controller. The Marvell SATA controller is connected by an x2 PCI-E link as opposed to a standard x1 link!



The Maximus IV Extreme was designed for tinkering so ASUS has added eight headers that are used with included probes for monitoring various voltages during extreme overclocking. The four switches on the left turn on and off the four PCI Express x16 slots. Also of note are the power and reset buttons, which should be a requirement on any enthusiast-targeted motherboard, not just the top-of-the-line products.



In the top corner of the board, you can see the digital code monitor. During boot failure, users can reference a list of error codes that will let them know exactly what is preventing the motherboard from booting properly. There is also a switch that puts the board in a special mode when using Liquid Nitrogen cooling. In addition, ASUS' Q-LED system will provide additional feedback on CPU, DRAM, VGA, and boot device issues via LEDs on the board.



Just above the top PCI Express slot, we see the front panel USB 3.0 header and a 4-pin Molex port for any additional power for any PCI Express card that should need it.