Intel D955XBK presentation
The Intel D955XBK headlines the Extreme series for Intel, which are boards designed to met the needs of the enthusiast. The oversized box art is refreshingly simple.
The first part of the bundle includes a well-written main manual, comlete with colour illustrations, that only covers basic installation. There's no reference to the BIOS settings and overclocking features at all. Intel's excellent one-click installation CD takes the boring work out of chipset and features installation, and a second CD adds in a whole slew of extra, useful software from the likes of Norton, Farstone, NTI, MusicMatch, Intervideo and Jasc, as well as a number of Intel-specific utilities.
What's interesting to note is that the 8 funky SATA cables supplied with the D955XBK carry SATA2 latches are are UV-reactive. That also goes for the ATA100 and floppy cables, and all are manufactured by BizLink. An 8-pin-to-4-pin 12v power connector is included for users who run with older power supplies, and a couple of molex-to-SATA cables keeps storage connectivity in good shape. Intel, as you would expect, also adds in floppy discs for both its own Matrix Storage and Silicon Image's controllers.
A 3.5-inch front-mounted box adds in a couple of USB 2.0 ports and the remaining 2-port FireWire support for 1394a (blue board header) and 1394b (pink header). Microphone and headphone sockets are also provided.
Extra fly cables are supplied to further boost high-speed connectivity ports and audio connections. A couple of USB 2.0 ports bring the total up to the ICH7/R-supplied 8. A single FireWire port doesn't make a whole heap of sense if you use the front-mounted box.
Intel's packaging and presentation is reasonable comprehensive
