The Board

On/Off & Restart Buttons and Debug Display: A reviewer’s dream comes true. These buttons work just like the ones on your case except you don’t need to connect it to the case. That’s right, you can test the board for functionality without having to actually connect it, nor place it inside of a case. Although once your computer is all setup and running well, this feature will lose its value. But it did make my job a lot easier and I can see its usefulness for the beginning stages of many computer builds. Unfortunately we would have also liked to see a CMOS reset button. Since the board is being marketed as an enthusiast overclocker’s board, that button would have been extremely useful as well. The display is pretty straightforward, during post, the numbers on the debug display will continue to climb until it posts (FF) or until a component fails.

Solid State Capacitors: Solid state capacitors are something that Gigabyte usually flaunts. These bad boys are supposed to last longer and run better. They also make up the majority of the cost of the AW9D-Max.

Extra Power Conduits: This board has a total of 3 connections to be made from your power supply, and abit added extra conduits to make sure the power is channeled properly and efficiently for great stable overclocks for the FSB, CUP, and crossfire setup.

Silent OTES 2: This is Abit’s patented cooling solution which has been copied by most of the competition and while this adds great benefit for a quiet solution without the worry of onboard fans dying, the implementation doesn’t seem quite as solid or polished as the competition. One of the things you’ll notice on the larger heatsinks is the giant Max logo. While this is done for aesthetic reasons, it is not for an added “cool” accent, its actual purpose is to block the view of the pipe connected to the heatsink by globs of thermal compound. Personally for being the patented owners of a technology, and having this be your top of the line board, I think a more streamlined implementation could have been used.

µGuru Chip: The feature that has been keeping Abit an enthusiast name for a long time now. The onboard µGuru Chip offers overclockability, hardware monitoring, and one click bios updates all from within your OS. One thing that we noticed and will be touching again later is the use of Abit’s old logo.

OC Strips: On the back of the board you will find small strips of metal that transfer and dissipate heat. How effective is it? Anyone’s guess, I haven’t heard any real numbers from anyone.

LED Lights: The blue and black color scheme isn’t just limited to the physical components, abit has taken it a step further. The board comes equipped with blue LEDs that shine back and forth in sync with 3 levels of brightness that is adjustable from the bios.

RoHS Compliant: One of the benefits regardling the acquisition of Abit by USI is their strictness on RoHS. This is basically the Earth loving stamp of approval for computer hardware. It means that everything from board components, to the actual manufacturing is done with restrictions on hazardous materials such as lead, cadmium, and mercury. Americans are probably unfamiliar of this since it originates in the UK, but I’m sure we’re all in favour of less deadly computer components for all parts of the globe.

For those of you who love simple, sleek, and black, it’s more than likely you’ll find this board sexy. Not only is the PCB itself black, but many of the components as well. The only other colors you’ll notice is some blue for the DDR2 memory slots, color coding guide for the case jumpers, silver for the heatpipes/Max logos & capacitors, and brown/yellow for the on/off and reset buttons.

While the board gives the appearance of everything being clean and slick from looking at it naked, during installation you may find things placed in less than ideal locations.

CPU Area: There are some capacitors by the socket that could cause some installation issues for larger cooling solutions. But we were able to install a Zalman CNPS9500 with no issues.

PCI/E Area: For those of you thinking of dropping top dollar for this board along with a crossfire setup, be prepared for a possibly useless PCI slot. PCI is old technology and it’s not unusual to see Abit treating it as such and focusing more on performance and newer technology. The downside however is that the rest of the world is apparently not quite ready to move along with Abit. One such example is Creative, their shining flagship being the X-Fi. The X-Fi is new technology on an old interface, but I’m sure plenty of the audiophiles will choose the X-Fi over the audiomax for a few reasons (one of them being the black X-Fi matches the board better than the Audiomax). So remember the size of your VGA cooler for crossfire setups if you want to make use of the PCI slot.

And for those of you who have been following Abit’s board releases you might notice they put the clips for the videocards on the right side for easier finger access.

Memory: The memory slots are clear of anything that could obstruct it such as extra large video cards.

Power Connectors: Not that they’re in particularly bad places, it’s just seems a bit out of place since the connections are almost at opposite ends of the board.

SATA and IDE: The SATA ports are well placed by the IDE port and near the molex connector on the bottom side of the board. However the 7th SATA port seems to have gotten separated from the group and is around the back I/O panel by the heatsink.

USB and 1394 Headers: Abit has decided to not utilize the space in the I/O section to its fullest potential but has included an added dongle to add 2 more USB ports and a firewire port. Common sense dictates that you will put the dongle closest to the I/O panel to bring all the USB connections to one area. The placement of the headers do not make this easy and makes cord organization a bit strained. Granted Abit had to choose placement to be reachable between both the added dongle, and the case connectors for case USB and 1394 functionality, but I do think they could’ve implemented the dongle a bit better, or place the headers better. And one last note, one of the USB headers is placed behind the PCI slot, if you have a longer card, it may become a bit difficult to access.