OTES and extras
Although designed primarily to cool the board's MOSFETs and power circuitry, the Fatal1ty AN8's OTES exhaust fans should also help vent warm air from around the CPU socket out of the system.

The OTES exhaust fans are temperature-controlled and easy to manipulate. Overclockers who require extra cooling can easily crank them all the way up, while those who desire lower noise levels can ratchet them down or even turn them off completely.

In addition to OTES exhaust coolers, Abit also bundles an OTES RAMFlow memory cooler with the board. RAMFlow's a decent idea, especially for those looking to push memory speeds and voltages, but securing the cooler's spring-loaded retention mechanism is a little dicey. If the RAMFlow cooler should slip out of your hands during installation, its strong springs can easily launch the cooler violently into the air. At least the springs do a good job of holding the cooler securely in place once it's installed. I should also point out that unlike the Fatal1ty AA8XE, whose RAMFlow cooler must be connected to a fan header all the way on the other side of the board, the Fatal1ty AN8 has a RAMFlow fan header right next to the DIMM slots.

A high-end Abit board wouldn't be complete without a two-digit POST code display, and the Fatal1ty AN8 is no exception. The board's manual has a full list of POST codes, which should make troubleshooting boot problems much easier for savvy enthusiasts and uninitiated users alike.

The board also comes with Abit's uGuru hardware monitoring chip, which powers its extensive hardware monitoring features. More on those in a moment.

First, we should take a moment to applaud the Fatal1ty AN8's use of high-end Rubycon capacitors. Japanese-made Rubycon capacitors were largely immune to the cap-bursting problems that plagued Taiwanese-manufactured caps several years ago, and having them on-board should give users a little extra peace of mind.