Bundle and presentation
A cool, understated finish from ASUS. The P5AD2-E' package weighs in at the near-3kg mark, suggesting that, like the board, it's jam-packed full of goodies. More cables than is healthy first catch the eye. You actually do need them all. Remember just how much storage the P5AD2-E offers.
Feature-rich boards need excellent documentation if the user is to get the most out of them. ASUS' manuals have always been well above average for the motherboard industry. That quality carries on through to this model. The manual is written in easy-to-understand English and covers every major point I could think of in decent detail. ASUS' alliance with InterVideo bears fruit with a comprehensive WinDVD Platinum Edition suite. The driver CD, too, is easy to use and software installation of all the board's components went off without any problems whatsoever.
A total of 10 SATA cables don't make intuitive sense until you realise tha a SATA extender board is bundled in. The extra couple increase the length of SATA connection for, presumably, larger cases where drives may be housed up to a metre away from the board. ASUS should have included a further couple black ATA cable for connecting the ITE RAID controller's 2 ports up, though.
An additional bracket is used due to a lack of I/O room. 2 further FireWire ports and the second RJ45 port for dual Gigabit duties are housed on a plate that will obstruct either PCI or PCIe slots.
Further obstruction can be caused by another two brackets. This time, they provide 2x USB 2.0, GAME, and Serial connections.
Last but not least is a WiFi antenna that attaches to the screw-in socket on the I/O section. The cabling is long enough for the antenna to sit on the tallest of cases, and connection was excellent from over 30 feet and 2 intervening walls away from a 54g access point.
