In addition to the board, a total of five optional PCI expansion plates are included:
1 x Firewire single port PCI module
1 x USB 2.0 dual port PCI module
1 x Game port plus dual USB 2.0 port PCI module
1 x SATA dual port PCI module
1 x COM port PCI module
Of these the SATA PCI module is the most interesting, as it allows you to take advantage of the hot swap capabilities of SATA hard drives. Rather than having to open up the chassis, you can transfer files from a spare drive simply by plugging it into the ports in the back. In order to use the plate, you need to plug a spare 4 pin MOLEX cable into the back of the module plus a couple of spare SATA cables connected from spare SATA ports.
In addition to the PCI expansion ports you also get an SLI connector, an SLI connector retaining bracket, the I/O shield, a total of 8 Serial ATA cables, a SATA power cable, an ATA-133 cable, an ATA-33 cable, and a floppy cable. None of the legacy cables are rounded which is slightly disappointing at this price point.
Software is handled by the Asus Premium driver disk which contains the motherboard’s drivers, a few Asus applications and the bulk of the software bundle. You get a 3 month trial version of Norton Internet Security and Adobe Acrobat Reader version 5.0. In addition to these two packages, you also get WinDVD Suite, a disk containing 4 applications, none of which is a DVD player unfortunately. Unforgivably, there is no driver floppy for either of the board’s two SATA RAID controllers.
