Connectors and I/O
ASUS equipped the Z97-K with six SATA ports, two of them can be
found below the 24-pin ATX power connector, and four at the bottom edge of the
board. Apart from that, there is also an M.2 slot. Therefore it should be no problem
whatsoever to equip office PCs as well as multimedia PCs with plenty of drives. We
also like that there are different types of storage connectors, which is definitely
up-to-date with todays standards. What you won't find with this board are practical onboard
power- and reset-buttons as well as a debug display.
You'll find
three fan headers on the Z97-K only, which would not be enough for a gaming
PC but for a multimedia or office system it's adequate. ASUS decided to use 4-pin PWM headers in all three cases.
Therefore it is possible to adjust rotation speeds in the BIOS or in Windows.
Looking at the external connectors directly at the back-panel ASUS
equipped the Z97-K with two PS2 ports for keyboard and mouse, four USB 3.0/2.0 ports,
two USB 2.0/1.1 ports, one gigabit ethernet connector, an HDMI, a VGA and a DVI out as well as an
analogue audio panel.