The 970 Pro Gaming/Aura from ASUS is part of the manufacturer’s Gaming-Series motherboards, which makes it feature a black PCB and red-colored heatsinks. This board certainly offers more than just a pretty color scheme like for instance great versatility regarding storage and peripheral connectors like USB 3.1 and M.2 SSD. Also the price of this motherboard is very competitive.
ASUS doens’t need any introduction here, hovewer we’re going to spend a few words on what ASUS must have been thinking putting this platform together. The AM3 socket was released in 2009 when AMD introduced their Phenom II series processors and the back in the days the chipset supported DDR2 as well as DDR3. In 2011, AMD released Bulldozer as well as the AM3+ socket. There are only small differences between AM3 and AM3+. In fact, even today you can use an AMD AM3+ CPUs on an older AM3 motherboard.
Since the platform/chipset definitely not young anymore one could ask why ASUS is using the 970 chipset instead the more powerful 990FX. The answer is quite clear to us: with this particular board ASUS wanted to create a well equipped board priced as low as possible.