The Foxconn P9657AA-8KSH2H motherboard might only support a single PCI Express x16 videocard but it still requires a lot of power. If you find the system unstable during load, try connecting the power supply to the motherboard through the auxiliary molex power connector just above the PCI Express x1 slot. While PCI Express devices aside from videocards are hard to come by, it's nice to see this board supports higher bandwidth peripherals thanks to a PCI Express x4 slot. For legacy hardware, three PCI slots are provided.

There are four USB jacks at the rear I/O, the other six are available through the three green USB headers on the PCB. No USB brackets are included however. The Foxconn front panel I/O is not well labelled so keep the system installation guide handy to decipher the pins. The low profile Intel ICH8 southbridge chipset is passively cooled, and mechanically held in place rather than just using frag tape - nice touch.

The Foxconn P9657AA-8KSH2H motherboard has an eight pin ATX 12V power connector but it is compatible with older 4 pin power supplies. While it might be tempting to touch the pins inside the socket 775 mechanism, it's a bad idea as you can damage them easily. The board supports processors operating on a 533MHz, 800MHz, or 1066MHz Front Side Bus.

The four DDR-2 memory slots accommodate up to 8GB of DDR2-800 memory. PCSTATS recommends installing at least 1GB-2GB DDR-2. There is one single IDE channel at your disposal so make certain all hard drives are SATA. Next to the memory we find the legacy floppy and main 24 pin ATX power connector. The Intel P965 Express chipset is cooled by a larger passive aluminum heatsink that takes advantage of the air currents from the CPU fan exhaust for cooling. Or in other words, it's a completely silent cooling solution!