Inside the Box Continued

Moving along to the cables and accessories, we get for our hard earned dollars a total of eight SATA data cables, one FDD cable and a single IDE cable that supports two drives. This is fantastic arrangement as you don't have to purchase any additional SATA data cables if you want to use all the ports on the board; you get enough from ASUS.

Power converters are limited, you get two Molex converters that support two drives per converter; a total of four. So, if you want to make use of all eight ports in the system, your PSU needs to have a minimum of four SATA power ports and two extra 4-pin Molex connectors available. But by today's PSU standards, that's not unusual.

For users who are into water cooling and other forms of extreme cooling that do not use any fans on the CPU itself, this little baby will help keep your system cool. When the board is equipped with the heatsink and fan, the air flow from the exhaust of the CPU heatsink passes over the surrounding components to keep them cool. With water cooling and VPC cooling, the CPU fan is eliminated. This fan is used if you go one of these two routes; it is placed on top of the Mosfets heatsink and air is blown across them to help keep them at operational temperatures.