First off we have a look at the packaging that the board comes in as well as the contents you get with it. Biostar’s P35 board isn’t the most expensive board on the market, but not the cheapest either, falling mid-range you should expect a decent bundle inside. The front of the box is a black and white affair with spiral design on the front that looks somewhat neat. As normal we have very little info on the board at the front apart from the company logo and model number as well as the mandatory Intel Logos to show what it supports.
The back, well it’s almost as bare as the front. There’s just some basic info on what the board supports. Biostar hasn’t gone with the colour photo on the back of the box, which we prefer to see from every vendor for boards in the mid to high-end range. The low-end can get away with it but this board should have a colour photo on the back.
Documentation included is more than adequate for the board. The user manual is rather thin but does explain the main functions of the board as well as the BIOS setup. A quick install pamphlet is also included if you want to skip the full on reading material and get down to the board install. The driver CD that is included gives you all the Windows XP and Vista drivers you need, but no Linux support for the wide range of Linux users out there.
Biostar has gone all out on the cable bundle side of things, there are so many we had to do it in three separate areas. First off is the SATA cables, out of the total six internal SATA ports available on the board Biostar has given you six data cables. So if you want to use all of the ports, you can straight out of the box.
Next comes our parallel cable bundle. A single rounded IDE cable with two drive support makes up for the single Parallel ATA channel onboard and a single FDD cable that supports a single drive is included too. A PCI cover plate that a RCA and Toslink S/PDIF output port is also included for the digital audio side of things. If you don’t have any DTS receivers you can simply avoid installing this part, or if you go external sound you don’t have to have this installed either.
Lastly the power cables; not all PSUs in use today have enough native SATA power ports on them. To this end Biostar has given you six Molex power adapters, so you have all six here if you plan to use all six ports with a PSU that doesn’t have any SATA power. No worries here.
