BIOSTAR has stepped into the new Intel generation by designing a brand new board with the Z97WE code name. The board was also presented at Computex 2014 and can be considered as taking part from the mainstream segment if we put it side-by-side with the latest high end board from the same company. The product comes shipped inside a medium-sized cardboard enclosure and the box art wants to highlight the audio capabilities:

On the back side of the box we will be able to spot a multitude of product features with a short explanation for each of them:

The board bundle is located on the top layer of the box, while the motherboard itself is placed on the bottom:

The Smart EAR Utility has an Usage Guidance leaflet and we will also receive one Installation Guide, while the supplied disk is filled with drivers and utilities:

A Velcro cable tie holds together four SATA3 cables:

The board is held inside an anti-static bag:

For this generation, BIOSTAR has decided to change the color scheme by using a black/golden/yellow assortment, as we have seen on some ECS golden boards. In our opinion, the black/blue color scheme which accompanied the previous generation was better since it matched the Intel logo colors quite well; despite this small inconvenience, the design of the board is well realized and we have enough space for fitting dual video card setups and we have enough space reserved between the first PCI-Express x16 slot and the CPU socket, for fitting large CPU heatsinks without any issue: