Motherboard Layout (continued):
To the rear of the motherboard, you can see all of the standard ports. You have the standard PS/2 keyboard/mouse, a serial port, digital SPDIF (optical and coaxial), Gigabit LAN, 4 USB 2.0 ports, an additional 10/100 LAN, and finally the 8 channel audio panel. There is one standard port that is missing, the parallel port, which is available through an expansion slot. The Marvell 88E111 Gigabit network controller provides one of the onboard LAN connections, while the Realtek RTL8100C provides the second. With both of these, you shouldn't have any bandwidth issues for quite a while.
Flipping the motherboard over, you can see there isn't much to see on the back. The yellow CPU heatsink retaining bracket is on this side, and matches the yellow found on the other side.
Accessories:
Inside the motherboard's box there is a plain white box that contains all kinds of accessories provided by ECS. These are split into two compartments, described below.
Here you can see what is included in the bottom accessory compartment. You have the ever-popular motherboard installation manual, which is primarily in English, with the motherboard specification page in 16 other languages.
ECS has included four (4) SATA cables, a crossover network cable, install CD, additional application CD, the parallel expansion slot port, and a bracket to install the USB and 1394 plugs into a 3.5" drive bay. On the additional application CD, ECS has included several helpful applications that include remote access capabilities, DVD player, DVD creator, music ripping software, a system restore utility, Showshifter for home theater environments, and nVidia nTune to optimize your systems performance.
In the top compartment, you have the motherboard I/O shield (which is keyed for the parallel port, not a fan exhaust), the SLI bridge, an eSATA port, a Y adapter for four pin Molex power to two SATA power connections, standard flat floppy cable, flat 80 pin hard drive cable, a 40-pin optical cable, SLI bridge retaining bracket, the Top Flash BIOS recovery tool, and the expansion ports for USB and 1394. Lots of accessories, most of which are required. If while flashing the BIOS there is a problem, the Top Flash recovery tool slides onto the BIOS and allows you to boot up and re-flash your BIOS. Most of us have gotten away from flat cables, and I wish ECS had included round cables instead of flat cables. Old style cables just don't seem to fit this modern motherboard.
