Generally the ASUS P9X79 WS's Layout has been very well thought. Once more practical are the angled SATA connectors as well as the power- and reset-buttons. There even is a debug display which is very useful in case you should have issues with a component in your system or the board itself. The reason that there are six full size PCI Express slots make inevitable that in a quad SLI setup you'll have to place one card in the last slot available. This means, that if you have a dual slot card, the connectors as well as the power and reset buttons will be covered by the graphics card. Something else that has to do with the placemtn of the first PCI Express x16 slot concerns the power design. In this case the phases, which are normally right between the CPU socket and the first PCI Express x16 slot couldn't be placed there. There simply isn't enough space. Because of this ASUS decided to make use of a wider form factor and they now put those phases between the DIMM slots and the ATX power plug und the right side of the board. This is an unusual spot but we think it's very well chosen.