5 - And an even closer look

SATA 3 Gb/second ports are on the board next to the left hand side of the board and two are located near the Southbridge heat sink meaning that there are 8 total SATA ports on the board which next to the 2-port IDE controller offers a lot of connectivity.

You'll notice that two SATA ports are color coded purple, these are not controlled by the ICH9R Southbridge yet controlled by a Gigabyte SATA2 controller chip; which also controls the IDE connectors.

We spot two PCI Express gen 2.0 x16 slots on the board which will provide a little xtra value if you plan to go Crossfire in the future. Furthermore three PCI Express x1 slots (the small black ones) and two PCI 2.2 slots. A growing concern i read a lot about int he forums, two-slot video cards will block the second PCI Express x1 slot and a even a PCI slot.

There are capacitors all along the top and right hand sides of the CPU Socket. There is plenty of clearance for aftermarket CPU coolers around the CPU socket.