Different Asus X79 Deluxe versions?

[Fleurious]

I was looking over my motherboard when I noticed something that looked odd, what I thought was a missing chip of some sort near the top PCI-E 1x slot. I looked at a few reviews of my board to see if it was just a bad board and found reviews with boards like mine and boards that differ. Hopefully it's nothing.

The top image was taken from the Techpowerup review and the bottom from Benchmark Reviews.



VS

[Dark Knight]

Could be differing manufacturing process or simply a process of simplification during manufacturing. If it works and there are no issues then there is nothing to be concerned about.

[blitz]

Maybe some reviewers reviewed pre production motherboards and the others reviewed retail motherboards.

[JD]

I wouldn't worry about it. If it was a significant change with impacts, it would clearly be labelled with a REV number on the PCB.

I would agree though that TPU likely had an engineering sample of sorts, since it lacks some of the stickers too that showcase certain features. BR likely had a retail sample since it has the "n00b-friendly" stickers on it