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Personally, I place great importance upon the design, construction, and layout of a motherboard. I have come to respect Abit for their quality of engineering and design when it comes to motherboards. Abit's IN9 32X-MAX would seem to be one of their best designs yet. 

A clean layout and design that is wholly typical in the placement of parts. Again, in the interest of time and to prevent myself from muddling over aspects that are more than obvious, I'll just touch on what I saw as neat, unique, and or frustrating.

First of all is the very well designed heatpipe cooling system made of pure copper. Taking a look at the backside of the heatsinks, we see that Abit once again resorted to using this very familiar, very disgusting thermal gum material. Although these thermal gum pads do work and will pull away a fair amount of heat they can't compare to a quality thermal compound.

Can anyone say Arctic Silver?

I do this with every part I own and every part I review. Replacing the white silicone paste, white zinc oxide paste, or thermal gum pads with Arctic Silver can make a difference in better cooling. In the case of our Abit IN9 32X-MAX motherboard, I was able to Arctic Silver both the North Bridge chip and the South Bridge chip, but couldn't successfully apply any thermal compound to the VCM (Voltage Control Module) chips. 

These chips rest pretty low, and the heatsink does not make contact with them. It takes that added bit of thermal gum pad to make contact and facilitate some heat transfer. Oh well, two out of three ain't bad.

Next on my list of notables sits out back, with one nice new addition is the rear IO ports.

Of note in the above are the external SATA (eSATA) ports, which are begining to become more common on high end boards.

There is a little switch (located down next to the purple keyboard PS/2 port) that really has me excited. It's a CMOS clear switch, in of all places, on the rear I/O panel, where we can get to it. Check out the three examples; The Abit IN932X-Max on the left, our Asus CrossHair in the middle, and the Asus P5B-E way over on the right. Typically, you'll have to clear the CMOS by moving around some jumpers (Asus P5B-E for example). A real pain once a board is mounted inside a box. More manufacturers have gone to a Clear CMOS button mounted on the motherboard, such as the case with the Asus CrossHair. But again, a slightly less aggravating pain to get to once your rig is assembled. Having a simple slider switch out back (where we can get to it without having to tear a system apart) really helps. In the preceding picture, the switch is in the right or 'Safe' position. To clear the CMOS, slide it to the left and leave it in that 'Clear' position for a couple seconds. Slide it back to the right and you're ready to rock with a pristine, stock BIOS. I hope someone at Abit got a big raise for thinking this one up.

I am pleased to announce that the Abit N9 32X-Max motherboard uses all solid state capacitors. Solid state capacitors (using a type of electrically capacitive polymer) are far superior to the old school electrolytic type (that use a gel type substance akin to a conventional battery). Solid states have around ten times the charge/discharge life of electrolytics and will never suffer from that leaky swollen capacitor syndrome that has plagued some other electrolytic capacitors in the past. An added benefit is that it's far easier to build a board using solid states. Remember; robots build motherboards, not humans. Having a range of physically identical solid state capacitors is far easier for a robot to handle rather than a bunch of different sized electrolytics with odd wire leads.

I also like how more and more manufacturers are using these Ferrite Core casings versus the conventional wound ring type (the grey block with copper windings versus the yellow ring with copper windings). The function of a Ferrite Core is to clean up any EM (Electromagnetic) fields that may interfere with data communications. They also help to clean up some of the ripple that occurs in the electricity zipping through a motherboard, but that's mostly the job of capacitors, SCR's (Silicon Control Rectifiers), and MOSFET's (Metal-Oxide Field-Effect Transistor Semiconductor's). Though there is still a need for the conventional Ferrite Cores, the casing enclosed ones are far easier to handle during assembly and help to dissipate some of the heat Ferrite Core produce (though it is quite minimal). It's nothing that will make or break a board, but it just goes to show the quality of engineering that Abit is known for.

These SATA ports are different. Unfortunately, I don't like them very much. Having them mounted vertically like this may save some real-estate on the motherboard, but plugging in a SATA cable when this board is mounted in a case becomes anything but simple. You can't see the port so you don't know how to orient the cable end connector. Abit did leave a couple of the horizontal SATA ports in place, simply to allow for one of the ATX mounting points, but I will always prefer the horizontal (laying flat) ports. Same with the lone IDE port. I've tried plugging in an IDE cable to these side mounted IDE ports before and I hate it, especially when working inside a cramped mid-tower case.

The on-board connections include . . .