Layout

Already at a first glance the ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe looks very good with its harmonic design. The colors suite nicely and the different blue tones on a black PCB are calming. The layout itself is well thought and concerning the samll form factor there is for example plenty of space around the CPU socket to install even big CPU coolers. Right above the PCI-Express-x16 slot there are four straigt SATA connectors. Placed like this it's possible to easily install a big and powerful graphics card without running into troubles.

ASUS equipped the P8Z77-I Deluxe with an eight phase current supply regarding CPU and Memory. To make such a complex VRM design possible on a mini ITX motherboard, ASUS had to think about something special. In this case, they put kind of a raiser card on the top edge of the board. Like this there is enough space for eight phases. In this case there is an ASUS regular DIGI+ VRM which you can also find on their mATX and ATX motherboards.

Totally you'll two DIMM-slots on the P8Z77-I Deluxe. The official clock speeds that are still under NDA. Therefore we'll release them whit the launch of Intels upcoming CPUs.

Southbridge as well as the current converters are being held at adequate temperatures via passive cooling blocks. The cooling blocks haven been positioned wisely, which means that they don't collide with memory or CPU cooler. Considering this is a just 17 x 17 centimeter small mini ITX board, there really is a lot of space for big coolers. Of course you can't compare this to a full ATX board but for mini ITX standards, this is really good.