The Aopen AX89 MAX is a high end board, with plenty of features. The most notable are support for six SATA drives, and highly configurable fan speed controls.

The board is laid out in a slightly unconventional manner, with the DIMM slots placed horizontally at the top of the board. This of course eliminates the possibility of interference with the graphics card. The AGP slot uses a sliding clip mechanism to hold down the graphics card, which is very easy to operate by hand, weather you have fingernails or not. The large 20 pin power connector is out of the way at the edge of the board, but the 4 pin connector is located just above the AGP slot, forcing the cable to cross the CPU socket area.

Fan header locations seem a little random, with the first in the extreme top right of the board which is only any use for a retrofitted power supply fan or a power supply with a fan monitoring lead. The second extra fan connector is next to the CPU fan header, just above the AGP slot. This is useful for graphics cooling, but it is set too far in to be convenient for using with a case exhaust fan. The last connector is in the middle of the bottom edge of the board, quite a long way from the front case fan.

Aopen have provided a 62-page manual, printed in colour. The English is clumsy, and the grammar hard to follow. Installing the board is explained in great detail, but there is a lack of information about RAID functions and BIOS options. The numerous colour diagrams and photos are clear and useful.

The board has a full range of overclocking options, with multiplier adjustment and CPU voltage adjustment all the way up to 1.8 volts. The price is reasonable at £86.98, and is a similar price and specification to the Gigabyte GA-K8NS Pro.

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