It's straight down to business with the Biostar packaging.

First impressions: blue PCI slots, a yellow AGP slot and red IDE interfaces - these make the Biostar the most colorful character of all of the test candidates.

The Biostar is sold complete with cables and driver CD.

While there's no denying that color is in vogue, the Biostar's design appears to be too much of a good thing: the PCI slots have been made in dark blue and the AGP slot in yellow, and on top of that, two of the memory sockets are in sky blue and another one even in white. Where support is concerned, the varied color-coding is probably an advantage, however: what color is the slot? Compared to previous tests, the Biostar has clearly improved. The equipment ranges from a FireWire controller to serial ATA RAID and 5.1 audio, right up to a three-phase voltage regulator. The manufacturer hasn't cut corners with accessories, either: delivery comes complete with two serial ATA and IDE cables, slot panels for USB 2.0 and FireWire, as well as two CD-ROMs of software. Worth mentioning is the stabilization for the CPU socket on the board's underside that effectively prevents the board from being bent.