I made a simple box and noticed that 3ds max places an automatic smoothing group per polygon, is this normal and why is it doing this? Should these groups be be removed for my low poly model?
That's default behavior for Max when creating a cube, or at least it was way back when I was using Max.
If you're planning to use that cube "as is" in your game engine then I'd leave the smoothing groups as they are.
If you're going to actually model something using that cube as a base then near the end of that process you'll be assigning smoothing groups anyway. Why are you so worried about them now?
How you decide to use smoothing groups in the end should be based on how you want your final model to look in game, how you layout your UVs, and what normal mapping style/techniques you plan to use. Check out the wiki for more info if you're lost.
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If you're planning to use that cube "as is" in your game engine then I'd leave the smoothing groups as they are.
If you're going to actually model something using that cube as a base then near the end of that process you'll be assigning smoothing groups anyway. Why are you so worried about them now?
How you decide to use smoothing groups in the end should be based on how you want your final model to look in game, how you layout your UVs, and what normal mapping style/techniques you plan to use. Check out the wiki for more info if you're lost.