The IP35 Pro is one of only a couple of motherboards in Abit's P35 Express lineup, and it's easily the more feature-rich of the two. This is also the first Abit board we've seen in a while that's arrived relatively shortly after a new chipset's launch. Abit was acquired by Universal Scientific Industrial more than a year ago, and it appears to have taken some time to get the revitalized company firing on all cylinders again.

Speaking of cylinders, I can't resist taking a shot at the box art for the IP35 Pro. We don't normally critique retail packaging here at TR, but this is the first time we've seen a monster truck used to sell motherboards. Apparently, the IP35 Pro will take you "off limits" on a "ride on the wild side," or something.

The monster truck seems inappropriate for a motherboard, but the more I think about it, the more it suits Abit. After all, Abit's best motherboards have always been affordable overclockers, allowing enterprising enthusiasts to wring blistering performance from budget processors. The legendary BH6 and BP6 were working-class heroes, and in a sense, the monster truck honors that spirit. So does the board, which is the cheapest of the bunch we've assembled today. It even eschews Abit's penchant for reds and oranges in favor of a blue collar, er, color.

The IP35 Pro's board layout is spot on. That's par for the course for Abit, which always seems to pay careful attention to how slots, ports, and other connectors are laid out on a motherboard. A perfect example of this attention to detail is the placement of the auxiliary 12V power connector, which sits next to the top edge of the board where power cables won't block airflow around the CPU socket or the rear chassis exhaust fan.

Abit has also kept the socket area free of obstructions that would interfere with larger aftermarket coolers. What's more surprising here, however, is the simplicity of the board's chipset and VRM cooler. As other mobo makers tangle complex networks of heatpipes and heatsinks, Abit makes do with a single heatpipe that links coolers on the north bridge, south bridge, and voltage circuitry. This simplicity pays dividends when it comes time to install a processor cooler; without a complicated heatpipe network to navigate, it's easy to get at the four posts that secure LGA775 heatsinks.

The heatpipe keeps the board's south bridge cooler nice and short, affording plenty of clearance to longer expansion cards. Gargantuan graphics cards won't interfere with any of the IP35's edge-mounted ATA or SATA ports, either—a surprisingly rare attribute, even for high-end motherboards built with double-wide SLI or CrossFire configurations in mind.

Ample clearance for longer graphics cards is perhaps only slightly less exciting than a couple of extras that Abit has squeezed into the corner of the board. Here we find a two-digit post code display that makes troubleshooting boot problems much easier. You also get onboard power and reset buttons, which are quite handy when benchmarking motherboards on an open test bench. If you're into that sort of thing.

We're still waiting for that first wave of must-have PCIe peripherals to hit, so it's comforting to know the IP35 has plenty of standard PCI expansion options. Running double-wide graphics cards won't severely damage your expansion options, either. The IP35 Pro has essentially empty space below its primary PCIe x16 slot to accommodate beefier coolers, so double-wide CrossFire configs will only cost you one PCI slot.

There's just one problem with the IP35's slot stack: the auxiliary four-pin molex connector meant to provide additional power to CrossFire setups is squeezed between the secondary PCIe x16 slot and the PCI slot directly above it. Picture a molex connector and its associated wiring sticking out of that port, and it's clear that you may run into clearance problems with PCI cards that have lots of surface-mounted components around that general area.

Much of the IP35 Pro's port cluster is standard fare, but there are a few notable inclusions worth singling out. The first is a pair of TOS-Link S/PDIF ports capable of handling digital signals for both audio input and output. Just to the left of those digital audio ports sits a tiny little switch that can be used to reset the BIOS without cracking the case.

Curiously, you won't find Firewire in the IP35's port cluster. The board's two Firewire ports are only accessible via onboard headers, despite plenty of available real estate in the port cluster. Headers for an additional eight USB connections are also available onboard.