Packaging

The ASUS M5A97 EVO comes in what has become standard packaging for ASUS in 2011. The striking black box with green and white lettering is common among all ASUS products, with the exception of the “ROG” series, which has packaging all its own. The simple, but effective design carries very few things on its front face, with just eight logos showing which socket the board supports, and the included ASUS technologies found inside. The rear of the box goes into much greater detail, describing briefly each main technology, while a diagram of the board itself sits nicely on the left side, pointing out all of the board’s features in an easy-to-understand fashion. ASUS deserves a bit of commendation for their package design; coupled with a very straight-forward naming scheme for all products, the box not only looks good on store shelves, its simplicity allows consumers to immediately spot the product they need, without fancy graphics and oodles of logos that might detract from what's really in the box.


Upon opening the box, we find the board right on top, wrapped in a protective anti-static bag. ASUS uses this internal packaging layout for all current products, with the motherboard right on top, so inspection of products at the store is a simple and easy task. Under the board we find the included accessories, which seem pretty sparse in comparison to some of the other products that have undergone torture in our bench station. However, being priced as it is, we did expect as much, and while we would have liked to have seen a bit more here, this is a trivial issue for a product in this price range.

Contents

This entry-level product comes with very little in the way of accessories as we mentioned, and shocking to us, we find only three SATA 6 Gb/s cables, along with a manual, driver disc, I/O shield, case badge, and the Q-Connector kit. It seems very odd that there is only enough cabling for half the included SATA ports, but again, this is partially dictated by MSRP. Take a quick look at the list below to find a full listing of what's inside the M5A97 EVO's box.

• 1x I/O Shield
• 1x User Manual
• 1x Driver CD
• 3x SATA 6 Gb/s cables with locking pins
• 1x 2-in-1 ASUS Q-Connector kit
• 1x Case Badge

Hit the next page for a look at the board itself.