Layout
The ASUS 970 Pro Gaming/Aura motherboard
comes with a great looking design. The PCB has a matte black
finish and the heatsinks feature red covers. The layout
has been well thought and there are plenty of useful features, like one header to attach external USB 3.0 ports, SATA 6Gbps Ports and an M.2 Gen 3 x2 slot.
ASUS equipped the 970 Pro Gaming/Aura motherboard with a 7+1-phase digital power design.The CPU is backed up by 7 phases, while the CPU-NB only one. Furthermore ASUS equips this board with their 10K Black Metallic Capacitors, which have an average life span of 10'000 hours. The power design is overall more than powerful enough to easily deal with extreme overclocking.
As far as the memory goes, you can find four DIMM-slots on the 970 Pro Gaming/Aura motherboard.
Officially supported are DDR3 2133(O.C.)/1866/1600/1333/1066 MHz. There is enough space between the
DIMM-slots and the CPU socket which means that you will not run into any issues
with large coolers.
The south bridge as well as the current converters are being held at adequate
temperatures via passive heatsinks. The heatsink for the current converters is made from
a single aluminium block. The
heatsink covering the south bridge has also been made from aluminium and is pretty simple and flat. Generally all the heatsinks have been well made and also they are perfetcly attached to the board to provide enough pressure on the components
they have to cool. The aluminium blocks are black with red sheet metal covers, overall resembling a completly new design.