There are three PCI Express x1 slots (in black), a PCI Express x16 slot in blue, and a secondary physical PCI Express x16 slot in orange (PCI Express x4 internally) when running a second videocard. With the way Gigabyte sets up the second PCI Express x16 slot, if CrossFire is on you loose the ability to use any of the three PCI-E x1 slots. There are two 32 bit PCI slots for legacy hardware.

The bottom right hand corner of the Gigabyte GA-P35DQ6 is packed full of ports and connectors. We find six Serial ATA II slots in orange (via Intel ICH9R) and two purple Serial ATA II and the green parallel IDE channel are connected to Gigabyte's SATA2 controller. There are four orange USB 2.0 headers for brackets.

Here you can see the elaborate passive Gigabyte SilentPipe heatsink which cools the Intel P35 Express Northbridge, the ICH9R Southbridge and power MOSFETs. The copper heatsink is designed to work with system airflow and it may be a good idea to clean out the heatsinks of dust every now and then.

The Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6 motherboard has four memory slots which can be filled with up to 8GB of DDR2-1066 MHz memory. DDR3 is not supported. To the right of the memory slots is the 24 pin main ATX power connector as well as the auxiliary molex power connector and the floppy drive connector. While the Intel P35 Express itself technically supports DDR3 memory, no DDR3 memory slots are available on the GA-P35-DQ6 motherboard.

The space around the LGA775 CPU socket is limited. Installation of heatsinks which are wider than normal, or bulky waterblocks may be difficult. If you do happen to install an after market cooler, make sure you have air flowing through the various copper heatsinks as it's designed to be cooled with the air from the CPU fan.

Hidden behind the rear I/O is the ESP12V connector. If your power supply only supports the older ATX12V, never fear the Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6 supports that too.

The Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6 comes with two Serial ATA brackets which have two external Serial ATA channels and a molex power connector. Also included in the package are E-SATA-to-SATA cables along with molex to Serial ATA power cables. This allows you to quickly hook up a hard drive at the rear of the PC.