It was a pleasant surprise to find such an elaborate cooling employed by Gigabyte on a mid-range motherboard. Fully copper and featuring tall over-hanging rows of fins totaling 30 rows altogether, this is the best cooler with the highest amount of surface area I've seen employed on a 650i SLI motherboard. And the story doesn't end here:

Right behind the C55 chipset lies a copper heatsink to take the cooling factor another length of distance away from the competition. In comparison, you'll find that the coolers on other 650i SLI motherboards pale:

For those worried about third party Cooler for CPU due to chipset cooler, here's how high the cooler stand from PCB, 3.2CM:

High score in the cooling department for this board for sure. The cooling on the Southbridge is much less elaborate, but quite sufficient for the low-heat producing NF430 chipset.

The 4/8pin +12v power connector lies beside the Northbridge. I was happy to see what I saw on the CPU socket area as well:

Not only is it the only 650i SLI motherboard to spot a CPU socket packed full of SMD capacitors, it is the only 650i SLI motherboard with 6-phase power for the CPU, with 2 MOSFETs splitting load per phase. The ASUS 650i SLI is 3-phase while the Abit 650i SLI is 4-phase by comparison. Good investment in features that make a difference in my book.

Gigabyte's favorite Voltage Regulator for CPU Intersil makes the ISL6327 regulator.

Rear I/O: PS/2 ports, S/PDIF Out connection (coaxial+optical), parallel and serial ports, 4 USB 2.0/1.1 ports, a IEEE 1394a port, Ethernet port, and 6 audio jacks.

Full bundle you get the manual, Driver CD, I/O shield, an IDE and Floppy Cable, 4 SATA cables and an SLI connector.