The IN9 32X-Max user manual is extensive and well written. There's tonnes of pictures too. A good tool for helping to get things started. The included uGuru manual instructs users in how to use the uGuru desktop utility. The uGuru panel allows for such features as Automatic In-the-Fly OC, 1 Click BIOS Updates, Total System Monitoring, and the BlackBox utility. I'll touch a little more on these software features at the end of his page. The CD is expected. It houses all of the chipset drivers, the Silicon Image and Nvidia SATA/RAID drivers. There's also a boot from CD feature that will allow the user to create SATA floppy disks from a command prompt style interface. The digital instruction manuals include one for the motherboard itself, an NVRaid manual, and the Wi-Fi manual. Adobe Acrobat Reader, Award Flash (for DOS mode BIOS flashing), and the latest DirectX drivers round out the included utilities. One thing that would have been nice though would be the inclusion of DotNetFix 2.0, especially since it is required for graphics functionality on every Windows box. I have also found that some drivers, most notably the latest ATI Catalyst drivers, do require DotNetFix 2.0, seems that the 1.1 fix just won't cut it anymore.

Here's the included AirPace Wi-Fi card and Antenna that Abit bundles. This will occupy one of the PCI-e 1x slots if used.

The big bar we have is a retention mechanism for holding down the SLI communications bridge(s) that Abit included with the boards hardware bundle. The I/O shield is standard fare, thought it has some vent holes that are a nice touch. The two little metal wire clips are something a little different though.

These wire clips are intended to hold a small 40 millimeter fan on the North Bridge chip set heat sink cooler. It's a great idea, but Abit never included an Abit branded fan for this use. Never the less, tiny fans like the one pictured (above) are cheap (maybe $10 bucks). And power users will often add extra cooling fans to their rig despite the added noise it brings.

A wise idea, but how well does it work. The fan I used was some cheap little generic 40mm fan, so I don't expect great things. But checking both in the BIOS for the North Bridge temps and with the uGuru System Temperature Monitoring Utility, we can make a determination of what added cooling will do to NB chip temps. Now I could show you some screen shots, but the one degree Celsius difference I saw wasn't terribly exciting. That's right, a drop from 30 degrees Celsius down to 29 degrees isn't that exciting at all. Still, it may help out during overclocking stages when temps at load can get pretty hot. 

Abit had their thinking caps on when they included a pair of extra long SLI bridges. Normally, most motherboard manufacturers might only include one SLI bridge, but if you were to take a quick peek at our XFX GeForce 8800 GTX XXX 768MB video card review, you'll see where two SLI bridges come in handy. It seems that due to the extra processing power of the Nvidia G80 GPU, that dual SLI is a reality. You may need two SLI bridges between two cards, but your graphics will be out of this world.

Six SATA cables to fill up every port. The right angled connectors are nice and will make attachment to a hard drive a little bit easier and a little bit cleaner.

We get a floppy cable and an ATA133 IDE drive cable. Rounded is good, and the ATA cable looks pretty cool with the transparent jacket and exposed wires beneath. I really wish though that floppy drive cables could be changed to something more akin to an onboard USB pin header. Having that huge cable flopping around inside a case just irritates me.

We also have an optical cable that will have us taking full advantage of those optical I/O ports out back. And of course, more USB and IEEE1394 Firewire ports. Two extra USB2.0 ports and a full sized and mini Firewire(s) tossed in. I'm really happy to see that manufacturers are starting to  gang up these additional I/O's into one single bracket. In the past, they would commonly use one bracket for the on-board USB2.0 ports, and then use a second bracket for the on-board Firewire ports. Yeah, let's suck up two I/O slots when all we really need is one. A single bracket is great, but presents one little problem with this board. Some enclosures only have enough ports for the PCI-e cards available. Some do have an extra expansion port down at the bottom of the case that the mother board can't take advantage of.

But if we were to cram in three double wide PCI-e graphics cards into all three PCI-e slots and plug that AirPace Wi-Fi card into the remaining PCI-e 1x slot, we wouldn't have any room left for the I/O port expansion bracket. I'm beginning to wish that high end motherboard manufacturers would start building and including front panel I/O ports that would slip into an empty 5 1/4" drive bay.

Putting it bluntly, there are enough cables here to get the Abit IN9 32X-Max motherboard running smoothly, and then some. It's really nice to see that Abit isn't going cheap on the hardware they bundle.

And lastly, there is the uGuru Utility. I've seen this before and I have nothing good nor nothing bad to say about it. Yes, you can use it to perform desktop overclocking. Yes, it reads out temperatures and voltages. Yes, you can use it to update your BIOS. Yes, it is something you can live without.

It honestly doesn't make much of any difference to a system. It does help to make tasks, such as flashing a BIOS, just a little bit easier. But everything it can do can be done elsewhere. So, it's more of a toy. There's also a utility called BlackBox. BlackBox can create a profile of your hardware and send it off to Abit. Helpfull for diagnosing a hardware problem you can't solve. And it would be of even greater help if the blasted thing would work. Half the time I run it, it crashes. The other half of the time it doesn't do a thing. Don't get me wrong, I'm certain it works on some Abit based system out there, just not this one. Or maybe it doesn't like me. Nevertheless, these Abit utilities are nothing more than cute little extras, and certainly not power toys.  

Now comes the time when I get to play around with one of the most important parts of a mother board..

The BIOS comes next.