Review: abit IN9 32X-MAX WiFi

Final thoughts, HEXUS awards, HEXUS where2buy, HEXUS.right2reply, further reading

In some ways, the IN9 32X-MAX WiFi is a classic abit motherboard. It offers a host of features for the enthusiast and its BIOS gives an outrageous degree of control over the board's performance.

abit's uGuru gives you fine control over thermal shutdown, system monitoring and more - and you can set the BIOS to give warnings or shut down the system according to any of the temperature sensors, not just the CPU's or the system temperature.

There's also a wealth of information, so you can tell how much further you can push performance before temperatures become too high for different components.

But there are gotchas. As with many abit boards before it, the IN9 32X-MAX is a rough diamond. We hit several BIOS issues in testing and some remain unfixed in the latest BIOS - last updated two months ago.

The board has been on the market since the end of last year, so we shouldn't be seeing such fundamental issues as C1E and EIST not functioning correctly - and that makes us wonder whether they'll ever be resolved.

Those issues are among the reasons why we can't put the IN9 32X-MAX on the same pedestal that some predecessors have stood. They also make it hard to justify the price. Another factor that has to be considered is that, although boards based on the reference-design don't have the fine-grained control that the abit offers, they do perform on a par with it, have similar overclocking potential and cost less.

Because of abit's illustrious past, we wanted to love the IN9 32X-MAX but £180 is a lot to spend on an nForce 680i SLI board just for the sake of nostalgia.

The abit IN9 32X-MAX WiFi successfully completed our lab tests. It also offers a wide range of enthusiast-orientated features - albeit with a price tag to match. This earns it Extreme HEXUS Labs certification.

HEXUS Where2Buy

At the time of writing, the abit IN9 32X-MAX WiFi was available from Scan at £177.24 inc VAT (with free delivery to HEXUS.community members - check out the details).

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS.net, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any of abit's representatives choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

HEXUS related reading