ABIT's Fatal1ty AN9 32x motherboard features six 3GB/s SATA II headers all neatly aligned in two rows. There are a further three USB2.0 and two Firewire headers, various front panel connections, half a dozen fan headers, and a Port 80 diagnostic card. The SATA hard drives can be configured in RAID 1/0/5/0+1/JBOD. There is just one Ultra 133 IDE header.

With two full slots between each of the PCI Express x16 videocard slots, the Fatal1ty AN9 32x motherboard is pure SLI gaming bliss when fully loaded. The top molex power connect is needed when running SLI. Further expansion comes care of two PCI Express x1 slots and a PCI slot. The bottom-most connector is for the audio daughtercard. Note the fan header here for the little VGA cooler fan ABIT bundle in.

As much as 8GB DDR2-800 memory can be installed into this dual channel ready motherboard. The socket AM2 AMD Athlon64 motherboard is compatible with legacy 20 pin ATX power supplies, but it's recommended to use at least a 400W PSU which has a 24-pin power connector. Just one Ultra 133 IDE channel is available. The CPU fan header is PWM compliant.

The nvidia nForce 590 SLI chipset is passively cooled with a small aluminum heatsink. The MCP55XE southbridge is connected by a copper heatpipe to the VRM heatsink just above the processors' AM2 socket. Two small fans behind this passive heatsink expel hot air from the system outside.The Fatal1ty AN9 32x motherboard supports all current socket AM2 processors.

The Fatal1ty AN9 32x motherboard has lots of space between the PCI Express x16 slots so rigging SLI with dual-slot videocards is not going to be problematic.