MSI KT6 Delta

This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective’s website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.

Layout

MSI is another of the premier motherboard manufacturers of the day. Let’s see how their KT600 board compares.

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The CPU socket does not include the 4 mounting holes but does have a PCB guard on the bottom clip of the socket. The bottom of the CPU socket is also kind of tight on room as well, so keep that in mind if you have or want to use a large heatsink.

The ATX power connector is well placed away from the CPU socket and MSI also included a 4-pin power connector as well below the north bridge for added power and stability.

The DIMM slots do not interfere with the AGP slot at all, again because MSI choose to go with 5 PCI slots instead of 6 of them. The AGP slot has a standard retention clip. The north bridge has a good quality heatsink and fan, but unlike the Abit board, the fan can be easily replaced with a replacement should this one die on you.

The two primary IDE channels connectors are above the AGP slot for easy installation and a clean case. The bottom of the motherboard is a bit crowded, but only because MSI packed the board with lots of features. The different SATA connectors are placed to separate them from each other, and so the user can know their “source”, either the 8237 from VIA or the Promise controller. The additional IDE channel is stuck in the middle but there aren’t any real problems there.

The case connectors are colorful on the MSI board, too. One thing I do like is the Firewire/USB headers have borders on them, to make installation easy and mistake free.

Features

The MSI board is packed with features. It has two SATA channels from the VIA south bridge and two more from the Promise controller. Also, the Promise chip includes a third IDE channel that can be used separately or with the Promise SATA in a RAID configuration. There are three Firewire headers on the bottom of the motherboard and a USB 2.0 header for additional ports of each.

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The external connectors include 6 USB 2.0 ports and a Broadcom Gigabit LAN solution. Not too shabby!

Included Extras

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MSI has included 4 SATA cables and 2 SATA power adaptors in their package, which is a great option for end users. They also included a rounded IDE and floppy cable as well as the 6-channel audio header with the additional 2 channels and SPDIF output.

Finally, MSI includes 2 USB headers and 3 Firewire headers in the box. Odd that they include 2 USB headers though….

Bios

The MSI bios is not as robust as perhaps a couple of the other bios’, but all the options are here for you to overclock with.

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Here you can set your CPU frequency up to 280 MHz, or your CPU ratio up to 15.0x. Voltages – CPU: 2.3v, DDR: 3.3v, AGP: 2.10v. These are really high setting for voltages and should give potential overclockers good options to work with.

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And here we see all the memory timing options that you would expect to see.

Memory Issues

I ran into very few problems on the MSI motherboard when it came to memory configuration and stability problems. It was probably one of the best of the KT600 group we tested.

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