Package and Contents

While this is actually a review of the chipset itself and not so much the board, we decided to have a basic look at the feature set that the board comes with. The board was supplied by ASUS. ASUS' design for the boxes is like Intel based CPU boxes, using a deep blue colour. On the front the ASUS logo along with the board model can be seen as well as quite a few other logos and marketing hype.

On the back of the box ASUS has its spec list, features list and marketing hype on the 9300 chipset that the board uses. For a budget/value board, we weren't expecting to see a colour photo of the board. However, on the upper right ASUS has supplied us with one, so if you're a bargain hunter who also wants to know what you're getting before you open the box, you're going to be happy here.

As usual ASUS provides a good software and documentation bundle. The user manual is coloured the same as the box; the same deep blue. The user manual contains quite a bit of info on the specs, hardware setup, BIOS setup and software on the driver disk. The Drivers DVD contains drivers for XP and Vista in both 32-bit and 64-bit variations. There are no Linux or alternate OS supporting drivers included.

Lastly is the accessories and ASUS only provides a single IDE and SATA data cable along with the ASUS Q-Connect header ports. This is a very liberal bundle, so if you want to run more than one SATA port you're going to need to purchase more cables.