Product Showcase

 
When we place the motherboard at an angle we see that all new socket LGA2066. It will support both Kaby and Skylake-X procs, these are referred to as the Core X series processors. The mounting retention is the same as on X99, meaning you can reuse your cooler and are not forced to purchase a new socket mounting system or complete cooling kit. Mind you, that Skylake-X runs HOT when fully stressed, get a proper cooler and use some proper thermal compound. Noctua just released their NT-H1 and NT-H2 thermal paste, we'll see how that works out in this review.

Storage ports then -- ASUS is equipping the board with six SATA3 ports. There is also one metal shielded U2 connector and tto onboard M2 slots next to the DIMM2 M2 add-in cards that you can use.

 
Here we see that a bit better. A proper six SATA3 6Gbps ports, alongside three M.2 slots that have been tucked away between the PCI-Express slots. 

 
There are two M.2 SSD slots available on-board, one 8cm type 2242/2260/2280 and one 10cm type 2260/2280/22110 slots. Both support PCIe x4/x2 Gen 3.0. With two NVMe PCIe Gen3 x4 M.2 connectors onboard. The M.2 this way have shields offering proper thermal padding and function both as protective covers and heatsinks. And again, you can add another four of them with the add-in card.
 

 
Here you can see the internal M2 slots. The memory DIMM slots have been reinforced with a metal strut in the middle as well. The board supports single, dual and quad channel with support up-to DDR4 4266+ (O.C.) and starts at 2133 MHz memory modules. 8 x DDR4 DIMM sockets can support up to 128 GB of system memory.