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The M4A79 Deluxe is packaged in a cardboard box with a design that has gone through many motherboard generations; the M3A78-T box has the same style. However, it is emphasized that the board has a brand new design optimized for AM3 CPUs.

At the back, the features of the board are mentioned and the buyer can as well get a quick glimpse of what the motherboard looks like. However, you readers are privilegied; you will get a complete view of it.

The M4A79 Deluxe is built on a black PCB. The layout is pretty much standard.

The backplate at the back of the motherboard has been made of steel for maximum robustness. Beside it, it is written that the board features the ASUS Stack Cool 2 technology so this means an extra layer of metal is present in the PCB. Such a uniform, board-wide system distributes heat all over the board, therefore it is dissipated on a wider area.

The socket is the standard AM2+ one. On its side are the four DDR2 slots in two different colors to represent the two channels. Identical sticks must be installed in slots of the same color so that they are in dual-channel. The distance between the slots is a bit larger than what I have seen on other motherboards though. This is great since it lets more room for air flow especially when using memory sticks with thick heatspreaders.

The M4A79 Deluxe sports 4 PCI-E slots for up to a quad-fire configuration. However, one of the cards cannot have a dual-slot cooling solution since the last two slots are one beside the other. There is also two legacy PCI slots for older devices. Having no PCI-E x1 like most other boards is not an issue since devices using this interface can also be connected in larger PCI-E slots such as the x16 ones. The internal connectors are located at the complete bottom. From left to right is the audio front panel, the SPDIF out, the firewire, the floppy disk drive connector, the COM connector and finally the three USB connectors.

Farther to the right are the onboard power and reset buttons which can be very useful for open-air setups. Next are the front panel connectors. The power and reset buttons, the speaker as well as the power and hard drive LEDs can be easily connected using the provided Q-connector. Right above are one of the 3-pin fan connector and the chassis intrusion connector.

Here is a better view on the 8+2 phase power design, the processor power connector as well as the heatsink covering the voltage regulators. This copper heatsink is of great quality and is far enough of the socket so it does not prevent the installation of large heatsinks.

What? Only 5 SATA ports? That is not much. Furthermore, if a graphics card with a dual-slot cooling solution such as the GTX200 series  is installed in the first black PCI-E slot, it will prevent all three SATA ports on the front to be used, leaving only the two on the side available. There is also an IDE connector for people still using older hardware.

The copper heatpipe is inserted between the southbridge and its heatsink, which is also in copper. The jumper seen in this picture is there for the processor's security. It must connect the other pin in order to be able to set the processor voltage higher than 1.70V.

Two 3-pin fan connectors are hidden right between the northbridge heatsink and the I/O panel. Also, as one can see, the blue "X" on the northbridge heatsink is a thick steel piece which reaches the heatpipe on each side so it gives solidity to the whole set of fins.

Finally, the I/O panel includes the two PS/2 ports for people that do not have a recent USB mouse and keyboard. There are six USB ports, one SATA, one firewire and one LAN connector. The optical and coaxial outputs as well as the six audio jacks are also present.

Finally, the M4A79 Deluxe is supplied with one SATA cable for each of its connectors as well as an IDE flat cable. A bracket with two USB and a Firewire extension is also provided. Also, since this is a crossfire motherboard, two bridges are bundled with it. The I/O shield is padded on the interior side and on the other side it is plain metal. There are two Q-connectors as I mentioned earlier as well as the usual driver CD and manual.