Sapphire Pure Black 990FX Motherboard Review - PAGE 2

The Sapphire Pure Black 990FX is built on a brown PCB with blue accents given by the six full-length PCI-E slots, the large heatsinks and the memory slots. Its AM3+ socket is surrounded by the two-piece heatsink retention bracket.

The bracket is held to the board by a steel backplate, whereas all heatsinks are screwed in. Besides the two main PCI-E slots providing a full connection, all the others are wired at x8 which is somewhat pointless because two of them can only operate at x4.

The large heatsink hides an eight-phase VRM, fed by an 8-pin CPU power connector. There is much insight as to what will be found on the I/O panel, too; a marking on the PCB advertises a Bluetooth connection, and a single SATA internal connector gives hint about its sibling.

Above the CPU socket are two fan headers, with one being the 4-pin type, as well as voltage measurement points.

Next to the DIMM slots is the VRM and the usual 24-pin ATX power connector.

The southbridge area is pretty crowded with a USB 3.0 header, eight SATA connectors, a front panel header, a debug and temperature 7-segment LED display, two other fan headers and finally, two USB 2.0 headers.

Continuing to the left, there is a built-in speaker, a BIOS select switch, power and reset buttons, a CMOS clear button and a Molex connector to ensure proper power delivery . when multiple power hungry PCI-E devices are installed.

As expected, the I/O panel features an eSATA connection and an integrated Bluetooth module. There are also eight USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 connectors, a dual Gigabit Ethernet, optical, coaxial and analog audio connectors, topped by a single polyvalent PS/2 connector.

The board comes with a front USB 3.0 bracket that can be replaced by one that installs in an empty expansion slot instead. There is also the I/O shield, six SATA cables and the usual bundle.