Top view of the GA-8IPE1000 Pro2-W. Here you can nicely look at the layout of the board. Everything is very well designed. You can clearly see how Dual Channel DDR works here. Similar memory modules are inserted in the same colored connector. The layout of this mainboard is good, everything seems to be in place. Everything is easily accessible. Gigabyte has placed the ATX power connector just below the DIMM slots, keeping the cable chaos associated with many other motherboards to a minimum. The mainboard is a very well designed. You better not be color blind though, Yellow: processor socket -  Green: AGP slot - Beige: 5 PCI slots  - Purple and Orange: Memory sockets White & Red: IDE connectors - Red: Serial ATA

Backside of the mainboard. I hear you say ooh and aah now! Yes yes ...
 

Perspective view of the mainboard. As you can immediately observe a stylish blue PCB. Let's zoom in a little at the different components of the mainboard.

On your right, three connectors for your analog sound. Of course you can use the optical SPDIF also (through a bracket) . Next to the sound connectors the luxurious 1 Gigabit/sec LAN, below it 2x USB 2.0 and then Parallel + 2x Serial, Connectors. Then to your left you'll see another 2 USB ports. All the way to your left Mouse and keyboard connectivity. You see, we have nothing to complain here. I would have liked to see firewire in here though yet we need to do that with the supplied bracket.

Each mainboard is controlled by a chipset, in this case the Intel 865 PE. On the mainboard we have two chips that control everything I/O related. We call them the North- and Southbridge. The Northbridge is what you see cooled here, it's responsible for the processor, memory, AGP8x, and thus very primary funtions.  The Northbridge is coolled by this huge yet silent copper('ish) cooling solution. The cooling offers some nice extra flexibility for overclockers.