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Features

As far as features go, the AK77-600Max has all the bases covered. IDE raid, SATA ports, onboard firewire (via an external bracket), 8 USB ports (6 on back, 2 via external bracket / case front), Gigabit lan, onboard 5.1 sound. An useful feature that will hopefully propogate beyond AOpen and Gigabyte is the Dual Bios (or as AOpen calls it, DieHard bios). An extra bios chip is included with the motherboard so that in the even that the bios gets trashed somehow (viruses, *gasp*cough*user error*cough*gasp) there is a backup that can be loaded. This removes some of the taboos associated with bios flashing as well as saving the end user time and money since a new bios chip will not have to be sent away for. The next step beyond a backup is having multiple bios profiles depending on what the machine is being used for, so one profile could be overclocked for games, while a second profile was less aggressive for desktop use. I believe it was Abit that announced this a while back, but hopefully some other manufacturers will also explore this route. The AK77 also features a jumperless CPU design which is good but on the overclocking side there are some shortcomings which will be highlighted later on. SilentTek is another one of AOpen's in house features; basically it is a piece of software that allows dynamic control of your fans based on temperature. For those with loud fans, this will be a godsend as they can be throttled down to sane noise levels when you are not ripping through your favorite game.