The Asus P5B Deluxe package is quite big. It can be found at a price ranging from US $200~250, making it an expensive solution for entry level users. On the other hand, enthusiast users will find the price very affordable:

The package includes all information about the board's design and special features

Below is a list of what's included in the retail package

• 1x UltraDMA 133/100/66 cable
• 1x FDD cable
• 3x SATA cables
• 3x SATA power cables
• 1x I/O Shield
• 1x Motherboard Printed User's manual
• 1x WiFi-AP Solo User's manual
• 1x USB2.0 port module
• 1x 3 in 1 Q-connector
• 1x IEEE1394 port module
• 1x Optional Fan for Water-Cooling or Passive-Cooling only
• 1x ASUS WiFi-AP Solo omni-directional antenna
• 1x Array Mic
• 1x CD-ROM with InterVideo® Media Launcher (WinDVD Creator 2, InterVideo PhotoAlbum, DiscMaster 2.5 Platinum, DVD Copy 2.5 Platinum)
  A flyer with installation and motherboard information
• 1x CD-ROM with drivers

The board itself, looks very "tidy" and most parts can be identified easily:

Let's zoom- in on the CPU area. We can clearly notice the passive cooling solution for the northbridge. As Asus comments "...The Heat Pipe design effectively directs the heat generated by the chipsets to the heatsink near the back IO ports, where it can be carried away by existing airflow from CPU fan or bundled optional fan...". Nearby components are low profile so there shouldn't be any problem with large 3rd party cooling solutions:

Moving to the southbridge, we can see the passive heatsink and the eight SATA 2 connections

The Asus P5B Deluxe board is ATI Crossfire enabled, hence the two PCI-E slots for your Crossfire setup. Between the two PCI-E slots, we find two PCI slots and in total, the P5B Deluxe has three.

There are several extra connections for USB, Front Panel Audio, COM2 and Firewire on the rear. Asus has include all port modules in the retail package. The back I/O panel has the usual connectors

• 1 x PS/2 Keyboard
• 1 x PS/2 Mouse
• 1 x Serial port
• 1 x S/PDIF Out (Coaxial + Optical)
• 1 x External SATA
• 1 x IEEE1394a
• 2 x RJ45 port (1GBit LAN)
• 4 x USB 2.0/1.1
• 1 x WiFi-AP Solo antenna jack
• 8-Channel Audio I/O

We notices what could lead to a rather difficult situation, if you decide to install a large sized VGA card, like the MSI 7600GT Silent. There are two capacitors very close to the PCI-E slot that may get damaged if you aren't careful when installing and removing the VGA card. On the other hand, using a passively cooled card, won't present any problems: