Packaging

Gigabyte's X99-Ultra Gaming is wrapped in a super-flashy box with a textured, highly reflective finish to it that catches light from all angles. The image on front is literally screaming with all the colors of light. A point is trying to be made here, that's for sure. The rear has the same finish to it, and a huge number of feature highlights. As I have to take pictures of said finish, I'm not a complete fan of it due to the way it scatters light from all directions out in all directions, but it definitely makes its presence known.


Flip open the flap at the front of the box and you will see an image of the board itself, lit up in red LEDs all over the place. There's a window under the flap that kind of shows the board, although a thick anti-static bag obscures what's inside.


Open the lid and you'll find the board securely wrapped and nestled in foam, safe for its trip to your PC case. This is one detail that pleases me more than I can express. A carefully packaged product is going to make it from the factory to your door intact, whether you buy it locally or have it shipped to you from an online retailer. Not all board makers go this far to protect their goods, but those that do get my respect. Under the board's tray are most but not all of the accessories.


The included goodies are few, but useful. A full list of what is included is below:

• User's manual, Installation Guidebook
• Case badges
• Door hanger
• 1 x support DVD
• 6 x SATA 6Gb/s cables
• 1 x Flexible SLI bridge cable
• 1 x Rigid Tri-SLI bridge
• 1 x LED connector cable
• 1 x CPU power cable
• 1 x Cable label sheet
• 1 x G-connector
• 2 x Velcro cable straps

Cable labels are included to help manage the mess of cables you might have should you populate all the drive ports. Being an Intel X99 product, there's a rather large compliment of SATA connectivity, so those of you who like to have 10 SATA devices like our cooler reviewer does are covered for sure.


The accessory that wasn't under the tray that holds the X99-Ultra Gaming, but rather IN the tray underneath the board is the door hanger pictured above. It might have gotten crumpled in the lower part of the box, and it made for a nice surprise when I pulled the board out. I was all like, "Oh, what's this here? Another freebee? OK, ok!"


There is a little accessory to aid you in wiring your case to the board; you simply install the wires from your case to this header to then plug the whole thing into the Gigabyte X99-Ultra Gaming.


Then there is a rather funny-looking power cable in the box, along with some rather nice SATA cables that remind me of cabling Gigabyte used to include many years ago. The power plug I had to ask Gigabyte directly about. More on that later.


I found a rigid Tri-SLI bridge with a slot configuration that matches the optimal slot choice for such configurations (even though NVidia's most recent generation of VGAs, the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080, only support two cards for gaming).


You'll get a selection of case badges to adorn whatever you like. I think I may have gotten an extra one, but you might find as many as I did in your box as well. Two were loosely tumbling around in the box, while one was inside the driver DVD's sleeve.


There are two Velcro strips to help you manage your wiring, and another wire that allows you to add external RGB LEDs via the provided header, which allows the included software to control these additional LEDs along with all the onboard ones.


The cover for the rear I/O is very nicely labeled, and includes spaces for the Wi-Fi antennae should you decide to add that functionality to the Gigabyte X99-Ultra Gaming.