ASUS 990FX R3.0 AM3+ Sabertooth Preview

Up Close

It’s tempting to say that the age of the AMD chipset is showing, and there is a slight retro vibe to the Sabertooth. However, ASUS have really done their best to bring it as up to date as possible without having to resort to design their own PCB and the crippling costs that would incur.

      

The Sabertooth has nice touches everywhere you look. The PCI Express slots have ASUS Safeslot freeing you from the worries of heavy cards in your PCI slot. The latches are lit with AURA LEDs. We like the clear POST indicators too. Anyone who has spent ages poring through the back of a motherboard manual trying to discover what error 4C is will appreciate clearly labelled LEDs.

Although it’s nice to have plenty of fan headers, and indeed USB headers, we’re not wholly convinced that the Sabertooth wouldn’t look better with all black plastics rather than the combination of black an desert sand. We understand why ASUS have done it, as anyone who owned their first P67 Sabertooth would recognise the colour scheme, just maybe it’s a tiny bit old fashioned these days to have multi-hued plastics.

     

      

As befits a motherboard with the TUF branding the 990FX Sabertooth has high quality power components across the board, and perhaps best of all behind the IO ports it is equipped with Electrostatic Discharge protection so that you don’t fear frying something just by injudicious plugging in. 

Speaking of IO ports there are plenty to choose from on the 990FX Sabertooth, from old but compatible USB 2.0, through 3.0, 3.1 all the way up to the Gigabit Intel LAN.