ASUS H87-PRO Motherboard
On Board Peripherals
Contents
The Intel H87 chipset is a single-chip solution, which is also known as a PCH (Platform Controller Hub). This chip has six SATA-600 ports, supporting RAID (0, 1, 5, and 10). The ASUS H87-PRO offers all the six ports.
Figure 4 shows the SATA ports, two of them rotated 90 degrees in order to not interfere with video cards.
Figure 4: SATA-600 ports
The Intel H87 chipset supports 12 USB 2.0 ports and four USB 3.0 ports. The ASUS H87-PRO offers eight USB 2.0 ports, two located on the motherboard’s rear panel and six available through three headers located at the motherboard; and six USB 3.0 ports, four available on the motherboard’s rear panel and two available through a header.
The ASUS H87-PRO does not support FireWire ports.
This motherboard supports 7.1 audio format using a Realtek ALC887 codec. This codec has the same specifications as the Realtek ALC892, except that the ALC892 has two extra channels for audio streaming. The main specifications for this codec include 97 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog outputs, 90 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog inputs, and up to 192 kHz sampling rate for both inputs and outputs, with 24-bit resolution. These specs are good for the mainstream user, but if you are looking into working professionally with audio editing, you should look for a motherboard that provides an SNR of at least 97 dB for the analog inputs.
The analog audio outputs are independent even if you use a 7.1 analog speaker set, and there is an optical SPDIF output. There is a header labeled “SPDIF_OUT”, where you can install an adapter to have a coaxial SPDIF output or to connect a cable to older video cards that required a physical connection to have audio on their HDMI outputs.
The portrayed motherboard has one Gigabit Ethernet port, controlled by a Realtek RTL8111G chip.
In Figure 5, you can see the motherboard’s rear panel with a shared PS/2 keyboard/mouse connector, two USB 2.0 ports, DisplayPort output, HDMI output, optical SPDIF output, VGA output, DVI-D output, four USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet port, and the analog audio connectors.
Figure 5: Motherboard rear panel