Foxconn's motherboards are notorious for carrying some of the worst names in the business, and the P9657AA-8KS2H is no exception. This seemingly random string of letters and numbers no doubt contains valuable information about the board's specifications, but you need a decoder ring to make sense of it all. If it hopes to find retail or even e-tail success, Foxconn would do well to amend its naming convention to be a little less confusing. Tacking on a nickname would help. The P9657AA-8KS2H could be rebranded as the P9657AA-8KS2H Condor, Devastator, or even Fred.

Fred might actually be appropriate given the P9657AA's understated attire. The deep blue board and restrained palette of multi-colored slots and ports is a refreshing change from the garish aesthetics that typify high-end boards. Multi-colored slots and ports are really only useful when the board's manual actually makes use of the color coding, anyway.

With relatively few onboard peripherals, the P9657AA's layout is straightforward and clean. I do wish motherboard manufacturers would stop putting the secondary ATX 12V connector at the bottom end of the CPU socket, though. There, the power cabling makes for a rat's nest of cables around the CPU in traditional ATX cases that put the PSU above the motherboard. The connector should really be located along the top edge of the board to keep cabling out of the path of chassis airflow. Locating the connector along the top edge of the board need not put it any further away from the CPU socket, either.

Fortunately, the P9657AA's CPU socket area is relatively free of other obstructions. A taller capacitor along the top edge (right edge in the picture above) may interfere with ultra-wide aftermarket CPU coolers, but the board's taller passive north bridge cooler is far enough away from the socket that it shouldn't get in the way.

Neither should the board's south bridge cooler, which is short enough to leave plenty of clearance for longer expansion cards. There's also plenty of clearance between the DIMM slots and PCI Express x16 slot to allow users to swap memory modules easily without having to remove the graphics card. That's a good thing, because removing double-wide graphics cards can be a bit of a pain on the P9657AA. The board's PCI Express x16 slot retention tab extends below the slot, making it difficult to reach with some double-wide graphics card coolers.

Double-wide coolers won't interfere with access to any of the board's Serial ATA ports, though. All four are neatly located along the edge of the board, and if you look closely, you can see there's room for two more. The P9657AA-8KS2H shares the same basic board layout as the P9657AA-8EKRS2H, which features an ICH8R south bridge and six Serial ATA ports. It's a good thing the model numbers make that important difference so abundantly clear.

Those heavily invested in PCI peripherals will be pleased to note that the P9657AA features three full PCI slots. You'll lose one with a double-wide graphics cooler, but that still leaves the board with PCI Express x1 and x4 slots for the wave of PCI-E peripherals that we all hope are just around the corner. Foxconn had also better hope that x1 cards will be shorter designs—there are a couple of taller capacitors in line with this board's PCI-E x1 slot that could interfere with longer cards.

At least the P9657AA's port cluster should make everyone happy. The cluster mixes old with new, preserving legacy serial and parallel ports while throwing in updated amenities like eSATA and S/PDIF audio output. Only four of the board's 10 available USB ports are accessible through the rear cluster, though. The remaining six ports are available via onboard headers. However, there are no onboard headers for Firewire. 1394 support is missing from the P9657AA, likely to keep the board's cost down.