ASUS P8Q67-M DO/CSM Motherboard

On-Board Peripherals

The Intel Q67 chipset is a single-chip solution which is also known as a PCH (Platform Controller Hub). This chip supports two SATA-600 ports and four SATA-300 ports, supporting RAID (0, 1, 10, and 5). These ports are located at one of the corners of the motherboard, so the installation of an add-on video card won’t block them.

Figure 4: SATA-300 (blue) and SATA-600 (gray) ports

This motherboard has 14 USB 2.0 ports, six soldered on the rear panel and eight available through four headers located on the motherboard. There are no USB 3.0 or FireWire (IEEE1394) ports.

The ASUS P8Q67-M comes with eight-channel audio, generated by the chipset using a VIA VT1708S codec. The specifications of this chip are professional-grade, including a 110 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog outputs, 100 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog inputs, and up to 192 kHz sampling rate for both inputs and outputs. This means you are able to capture and edit analog audio (e.g., converting LPs to CDs or MP3 files, converting VHS tapes to DVDs or any other digital format, etc.) with this motherboard without adding any background noise.

However, this motherboard has only three analog audio jacks. This means that you can only add a 5.1 speaker set, and since you will have to use the “line in” and “mic in” jacks, they will become unavailable. The motherboard doesn’t come with on-board SPDIF connectors, but you can add them by installing an adapter on the available “SPDIF_OUT” header.

The portrayed motherboard has one Gigabit Ethernet port, controlled by the chipset using an Intel WG82579LM chip to make the interface with the physical layer.

In Figure 5, you can see the motherboard rear panel, with mouse and keyboard PS/2 connectors, DisplayPort output, VGA output, DVI-D output, six USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet port, and shared 5.1 analog audio jacks.

Figure 5: Motherboard rear panel