Like any other Deluxe series mainboard, this new flagship product (it should be viewed as the top-end offer from ASUS for the Socket A platform today) comes in an exclusive package:

You open the face side of the box like you do a book to read the description of the major innovation, the WLAN adapter I’ve just told you about, and to take a look at the card and the accompanying antenna. This “book” reminded me of the old LEGO set from my childhood – the designers may have wanted to emphasize that the deployment of a wireless network is as easy as building something out of LEGO parts. The software you receive with the WLAN card allows using it as a wireless access point.

What else do we see in the package? The first plastic bag contains cables (2 IDE and 1 FDD) and jumpers, the next one – 2 SATA cables and a power adapter for SATA drives. This adapter differs from analogous devices (for example, the one included with the EPoX 8RDA3+ mainboard) as we have only one adapter for two cables here rather than two adapters for two cables.

Next we extracted an I/O shield, a bracket with two USB ports and another bracket with FireWire ports. You receive some reading stuff, too. Three manuals teach you the specifics of the mainboard handling, WLAN deployment and quick installation. There are also three CDs: drivers for the mainboard, software for the Wi-Fi card and InterVideo WinDVD Suite. This is all accompanied with a sticker for the system case with the ASUS logo and another sticker that illustrates the positions of the main jumpers and connectors.

Now, we have reached the mainboard itself: