Hi John,

The table on this page deals with the chipsets, not the motherboard itself. The table shows what each chipset features and what each is capable of supporting.

If you go to the next page (Closer Look, Specifications, and Benchmark Testing Platform), and scroll down to the second last table (ASROCK Z68 Extreme 4 Specifications), it contains all of the information there.

So, if you go to the “Expansion/Connectivity” section of that table, you’ll see the “USB 3.0″ row. The 2 x USB 3.0 ports are the ones that come on the bracket you get with the motherboard. Move below to the “Connector” row and you get 3 x USB 2.0 headers (support for 6 USB ports – 3 headers x 2 ports each). So, at this point, we only have 2 physical USB ports (the USB 3.0 bracket), but with a possible total of 8 if you count the six that require outside connections.

Move down one more block and we have the I/O ports. We have 4 physical USB 2.0 ports on the back, as well as 2 more physical USB 3.0 ports, which yields an overall physical total of 8 USB ports, but with a potential total of 14, if you decide to expand the 3 USB 2.0 headers and add-on 6 extra physical ports on top of the 8 that are present on the board itself (counting the bracket).

All of this corresponds with the amount of ports and other connections each chipset supports in the table on the Specifications, Overview, and Features page that you were looking at.

Thanks for the question! 🙂

Thanks John