Open the box and it is the same affair as the abit AT8 32 package, the top houses two boxes so let us get them out and take a look inside.

Inside the first box there is the manual, backplate, Driver and application CD, a Sli connecter (packed before Nvidia decided not to allow use of SLI on anything but Nvidia chipsets), a uGuru manual, a quick installation guide, Sara chipset drivers and some rather strange looking backing PCI plate that I later found out to be…….

The next box has all the connectors you need, from the ide and Sata cables to the extra firewire and USB ports should you need them, it is good to see all connectors that you need included.

Once the boxes are out of the way we can see the Realtek HD abit AudioMAX card should you choose to run the onboard sound.

As you can see from this picture there is a CD/DVD audio input connector as well as a front panel (Green connection on card) this will enable you to plug your headphones and mic into the front of the case and via the software it will auto kill the rear output. Quite nifty if you ask me!

As you would of guessed from the picture above the AudioMAX supports 7.1 through the analogue connectors or the optical cable, this can be reversed to and act as an input. Anyway enough about the accessories let us take a look at the motherboard it self.

Once you get the motherboard out you can see the board is pretty well laid out,  we have 1x pci slots 2x Pcie 1 slots, and an audio slot for the included card and of course 2 Pcie x16 slot. One thing I did spot straight away that abit have done all you modders a favor by keeping all the connectors (power connecters) at the edge of the board, a very smart move as there is nothing worse than cables draped across the motherboard due to bad connector placement.

Next Page Physical layout Pt2