The Basics:

The P8P67 EVO is laid out pretty much in the same fashion that their other P67 boards are.



The heatsinks surrounding the CPU socket are quite large and should provide adequate cooling. The Northbridge heatsink has an incorporated heatpipe to draw away even more heat. The Southbridge heatsink is quite large but yet has a low-profile design so it won't interfere with larger video cards.



The bottom of the board has the front panel connectors, a 3-pin fan header, USB headers - and a feature that should be more prevalent - on/off and reset button mounted directly on the board. This can't cost manufacturers that much more money, but as more and more folks build their own computers, it can be quite helpful in the initial build and troubleshooting phases. Also of note is the TPU chip, which helps to optimize your systems performance while maintaining stability.



The left bottom of the board reveals two more USB headers, a IEEE 1394 FireWire header and a switch that activates or deactivates the TPU chip we just saw. In addition, there is the third PCI Express x16 slot. While it is physically an x16 slot, it operates at a maximum of x4 as it shares bandwidth with both of the PCIe x1 slots, the SATA II ports, and the USB 3.0 header. It is designed for PCIe x4 and x1 devices and runs by default at x1 speed. The use of a full x16 slot may be confusing for some consumers who think they can run Tri-SLI on this board.