It is not often we find a new motherboard gets our full attention, but a new Mini-ITX motherboard from ASUS has really succeeded in doing so. The board gets a relatively large VRM section in relation to its overall size and looks well prepared for overclocking.
The standard Mini-ITX is only 170 x 170 millimeter, which forces manufacurers to compromise with functionality and things like overclocking are usually not prioritized. ASUS Z77-I Deluxe is the exception, and it makes this possibly by building upwards.
The board has an extra circuit board soldered to the regular board and it contins additional circuits for handling the power supply to the processor. ASUS has also added an extra 8-pin connector to the board. This is not common with Mini-ITX. It is kind of hard to tell, but it looks like the VRM section is an expansion card that can be removed if not wanted.
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Besides this clever solution we see two DDR3 slots, four SATA ports whereof two SATA 6.0 Gbps) and one PCI Express x16 that we assume is PCIe 3.0. We also see the board comes with WiFi and even if we can’t see the I/O bracket in detail it looks to have most of the connectivity we are used to seeing. Worth noting is the minimal heatsink on top of the new Z77 chipset, something we hope is a sign for that the new LGA1155 chipset is cooler than the current Z68 chip, despite the integrated USB 3.0 support.
Source: Chiphell
