ASUS M4A78T-E 790GX AM3 Motherboard Review

A Closer Look at the ASUS M4A78T-E

At first glance, the overall layout is top-notch. The ATX power connector, the floppy connector, and the IDE connector are all intelligently located at the edge of the motherboard, which is both convenient and functional. The SATA ports are located inwards, but since they are positioned near the bottom of the motherboard the potential for conflict with other components is reduced. We like the fact that there is a significant amount of room between both physical PCI-E x16 slots, which should allow the use of just about any aftermarket VGA cooling solution and even those insane triple-slot graphics cards from Palit. Overall, the designers have done an excellent job with this layout.


Now let’s take a closer look at the individual sections:


As you can see, the general CPU socket area on this motherboard is quite clean. If you remove the CPU cooler bracket (just need a phillips-head screwdriver), there really is a blank space to work with, which is ideal for those who utilize more extreme forms of cooling and who need to insulate around the socket area. Likewise, this should ensure compatibility with any size of air cooler or water block without issue.

This motherboard features an 8+1 phase VRM power design consisting of heatsink-cooled MOSFETs and high-quality sealed Yageo ferrite core chokes. For those of you wondering, the additional 1 phase is dedicated to the integrated memory/HT controller. Either way, this design officially supports 140W CPUs, and we have no doubt that it can handle even the most insanely overclocked Phenom II processor.

The cooling system on the M4A78T-E is fairly appealing but very simplistic, with no heatpipes or thick-based heatsinks. We will be testing the efficacy of this new cooling system in a later section.


Here we have the Halloween-themed orange & black dual-channel memory slots, which support a total of 16GB of system memory. ASUS has outfitted this model with a single-phase power design for the memory, which should ensure stable voltages to your quickly-depreciating DDR3 modules. At the edge of the motherboard, there is the perfectly located 24-pin ATX power connector and one of the three fan headers.


Here we get a good look at the tiny heatsink which is cooling the advanced SB750 southbridge. Starting from directly below the southbridge, there is the IDE connector, and then to the left the five vertical red SATA II ports, the non-colour-coded front panel header and the three USB headers. The SATA ports all support RAID 0/1/5/10 and JBOD. One thing worth mentioning is the socketed BIOS chip is identified with a green dot, which is extremely useful since no longer will you have to ship the entire motherboard if there is a fatal issue with the BIOS (bad flash, for example).

As mentioned above, the overall expansion slot layout and assortment is excellent. There are two full-sized PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots, two PCI-E x1 slots and two legacy PCI slots. As is the case on nearly every motherboard on the market, if you install dual-slot graphics cards in any of the PCI-E x16 slots, you automatically lose access to the slot directly under it. In this case it would be a PCI-E x1 and/or PCI slot. It should be noted that although this model supports CrossFireX, only the blue PCI-E x16 slot supports a full 16 electrical PCI-E lanes, while the black PCI-E x16 slot is limited to x8.


Starting from left to right, we have the Atheros L1E Gigabit LAN controller, which runs on the PCI-Express bus, and then the ITE IT8720F chip I/O controller which is responsible for hardware monitoring, fan speed management, and it supplies the legacy floppy support and PS/2 ports. Interestingly, ASUS has foregone Realtek in favour of a VIA VT1708S 8-channel High Definition Audio CODEC. This seems a like a cost-cutting measure to us, but we have no complaints about its audio quality or functionality. For those of you who have asked, we have included the ICS 9LPRS477CKL clock generator at the very top.

Next is a closer look at the uniquely designed northbridge cooler, and the revelation of the somewhat hidden single-phase power design for the 790GX northbridge. This chipset utilizes very little power and runs quite cool, so both of the aforementioned design elements are more than adequate. At the bottom of the image you may spot one of the three fan headers.


As expected, the rear I/O panel is quite crowded. From left to right, there is the single PS/2 keyboard port, two USB 2.0 ports, optical S/PDIF port, HDMI port, VGA & DVI ports, two USB 2.0 + FireWire + eSATA ports, Gigabit LAN port + two USB 2.0 ports, and finally the six audio jacks.


On the back on the motherboard we can spot the large metal backplate behind the CPU socket area. This is a new design feature that ensures that heavy cooling solutions will not bend and potentially damage the PCB or even the CPU socket itself. The other image is of one of the two plastic push-pins that secure the northbridge cooler. We would always prefer to see actual bolts being used, since it is simply a sturdier mounting method.