The nice thing about this board are its three PCI slots. If you still have your old PCI cards, such as a TV tuner, sound card or even an Ageia PhysX, you will have enough space to put them in. When using a dual-slot graphics card in the PCIe x16 slot, the PCIe x4 will still remain free, and we find this as a very good move from Biostar. Of course, the floppy connector is very poorly placed, but hopefully you won't need it. BIOS updates can be done with a software tool.



Network connectivity is provided by a PCI Realtek chip. Gb LAN does not make sense with a PCI chip, so we advise its use only for Fast Ethernet. Sound is provided by the common Realtek ALC888. PATA devices can be used, thanks to the JMB368 controller on board. It does't provide any SATA connections compared to the JMB363, so we miss the eSATA feature on this board.



The SATA connectors are far away from any graphics card and long PCI cards are now uncommon and you won't have troubles with them. Due to the fact this board is 4/5 ATX it is not big enough to put the IDE connector 90° angled to the PCI slots. You should use a round cable to avoid any cable mess.

On the left corner of the board you also find small reset and power-on switches. This may help you set up your board before it is finally put it in a case.