Diamond includes several necessary items with the C400 package: A standard Pentium 2 retention post (holder), a floppy disk drive controller cable, an E-IDE hard drive controller cable, a "Quick Reference Guide" and an "Installation CD".

The Quick Reference Guide is a gorgeous foldout black and white mini-poster with a complete diagram/photo of the C400 with every possible jumper connector and setting clearly explained. When we first took a look at the guide, we commented to each other words to the effect that we've let our standards slip a little when it comes to mainboard instruction manuals and the like. With the broken English riddled manuals for mainboards from overseas being an all too common occurrence, it's nice to see the way a proper guide should be written and diagramed.

Leave it to Diamond to raise the bar...

Also included with the foldout is a CD that has the full C400 instruction manual incorporated on it. The good news here is that the manual is one of the best and most informative we've ever seen included with a mainboard. The bad news is that unless your machine is already up and running before you install the new board, you won't be able to read the manual since it's in Adobe Acrobat format which requires a PC to read. The CD includes Acrobat Reader 3.0 and the C400's drivers, and a nice Diamond-esque setup program that takes care of everything.

The C400 was designed primarily to ease the transition from an older machine to a newer one via upgrading the system board. In that role it shines, and is currently the least difficult mainboard to get up and running quickly. Even the novice should have no trouble with the C400, the instructions and foldout are "Nintendo64" easy.

By making that choice, Diamond did produce a negative effect for the overclocking crowd, as the C400 automatically detects the type of CPU in the system (66 of 100MHz FSB variety) and sets the speed accordingly. Users still have control over the clock multiplier setting, (via jumpers on the board) but unless your CPU is an older Intel model with no "clock lock" (an Intel feature that discourages remarkers from selling overclocked CPUs in the retail market) then you won't be able to run at any setting besides what the CPU was intended for.

Overclockers are better served with a board from either Abit or AOpen, as those two seem to have the best boards we've tested for that specific purpose.

The C400's BIOS is your standard Award-fare, complete with the same settings that 50 other 440BX mainboards currently include. Nothing out of the ordinary here, except for the fact that the instruction manual for the C400 includes not only definitions for the various BIOS settings, but also recommendations towards what goal the user wishes to achieve. Very sharp, and no doubt very appreciated by the beginner.