The Package

Now we start to look at our P965 candidate motherboard and before we look at the board itself, we take a look at the package and exactly what extras you get for your dollars.

The size of the box is extremely large, implying there is a lot for your dollars. On the front there is a small window that shows you some of the goods you get. On the front there is some info on what the motherboard supports.

On the front there is a flap that shows you more of the board itself inside the packaging as well as explaining more of the features.

On the back is even more information on the boards features so you know what you're getting into.

When it comes to documentation and software, Gigabyte doesn't skimp here. You get a single user manual that explains all the details of installing the board and two quick installation pamphlets. A single CD with all the latest drivers and software package that Gigabyte supports are also provided but as always, we recommend you go online and download the latest drivers.

Since the introduction of the ATX standard about eight years ago, new ports have become standard with these new boards, and the cases these days can't support all the ports on a single back plate. To this end every board you buy these days come with their own I/O shield plate.

Now we get to some of the port expanders that Gigabyte put into the fray. First up are two PCI riser slot covers with two e.SATA ports and a power port x2. These allow you to have four e.SATA ports on your motherboard, more than any other on the market currently and because they plug into the standard SATA-II ports on the motherboard, you can hook them up to any SATA controller card you want to add into the system.

Lastly on the list we get four SATA-II cables, 1 IDE and 1 FDD parallel cable.