The ASUS P5QEM motherboard chipset cooler is bright blue, comes in an odd stealthy shape and does a good job of cooling the chip along with mak¬ing the board look great. There is only one PS2 port that can be used for either a mouse or a keyboard. The board in general has been laidout very evenly and kept as spacious as possible even though this is a Micro ATX form factor board.

The ECS GF9300T-A is a proper ATX board and is the largest of all the motherboards for Intel processors. The SATA ports are placed above the PCI Express slot so that there is absolutely no way the card or the cooler can block the ports. In looks as well, the board is very gaudy and bright. It is a predominantly black board with a bright red PCI-E slot and black PCI slots. Other than the red and yel¬low RAM slots, there's also a fancy looking heatsink with a Black series badge on top. Dedicated power buttons on the board for Reset and Power On/Off are also a good touch for a board with a modest price. This is easily the least cramped board of all
the ones for the Intel platform.

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The Gigabyte EG43M-S2H on the other hand is a lot more cramped than the ECS. There are a few capacitors near the PCI Express slot that can be of concern when you plug in a large card such as a GeForce GTX 280 or a Radeon 4870 X2, for example. The heatsink on the north and south¬bridge do a fair job of cooling. The MSI G43M2 has loads of capacitors placed all over the board between slots and even has the CMOS cell placed in between the PCI Express and the first PCI slot.

In the ZOTAC GeForce 9300, the 24-pin power connector for the board is located in an unusual position above the processor on the extreme edge. If you have happened to use a cabinet that has the power supply mounted at the bottom, then be sure the power supply has a long enough cable. There's also a LED poster with error codes if necessary. USB ports on the back of the board are also an unsual orange.