Cooling
Every manufacture has a signature or style that they use on their motherboards, specifically in the cooling department. When it comes to the cooling, its performance is important, bit if it doesn’t have style no one will buy the board. ASUS uses a blue anodized pin design that looks very efficient and also has a unique style that only ASUS has.
All of the heatinks are secured using spring loaded fasteners to keep them snug but not too snug. Man that blue anodized color looks good!
The two heatsinks around the CPU socket are in place to keep each of the 12+2 power phase’s running cool. Without good cooling you are going to have trouble pushing the power limits of the board while overclocking. Lucky for us Asus’s cooling design is perfect for keeping it all cool.
Down below the CPU you have another heatsink that is attached to the others with a heatpipe. The heatsink has a few groves in it but it isn’t enough to dissipate all of the heat on its own due to the low profile design. The heatpipe pulls the heat from this heatsink to a better performing one on the left of the CPU.
Last but not least you have another low profile heatsink next to the PCI Express x16 slots. This is where you will find the P67 chipset or for those who remember the problems earlier this year cougar point. This is the only heatsink with Asus’s logo on it ironically. Odd considering this is also the heatsink that is most likely to be covered up by long high performance video cards.