Intel P45 Motherboard Roundup: MSI, ASUS and Gigabyte

The MSI P45 Platinum motherboard is at the very least the shiniest of the motherboard tested today.  Of course it also brings to table a great collection of features at a bargain price.

Looking at the whole board you first pick up the massive heatsink and heatpipe configuration that covers the north bridge and south bridge chips in addition to the MOSFETs along the sides of the CPU socket. 

The expansion configuration on the MSI board is nearly identical to that of the Gigabyte board we looked at previously though this offering lacks one of the PCIe x1 slots above the top PCIe x16 graphics slots.  Otherwise, they are identical: two PCIe x16 slots that support CrossFire graphics options, two PCIe x1 slots and two legacy PCI slots at the bottom.  If you have dual-slot coolers on your GPUs, you will lose the slot directly under the PCIe x16 slot however, so keep that in mind as you build out your system. 

To the right of the expansion slots rests the storage solutions the MSI P45 Platinum offers including six SATA ports from the ICH10R south bridge, two more SATA ports and the yellow IDE port from the included JMicron chip, three USB and one Firewire header (for additional ports) and more.  You can also see two red buttons that are oddly not placed next each other; one is an on-board power button while the other is a reset button. 

Did I mention that the heatsink on this motherboard was big?  If not, here you go.  It actually looks pretty cool to my eyes and somewhat resembles an engine block.  Don’t let the sun shine on it though as the reflection might cause some permanent damage to your vision.  This complicated mass of copper is used to cooler the P45 north bridge, ICH10R south bridge and the power circuitry surrounding the CPU. 

The MSI P45 Platinum motherboard has four DIMM slots that support DDR2 memory, just as the Gigabyte EP45-DS3R did.  It will officially run the DDR2 memory at 1066 MHz and beyond with some modest overclocking.  The 24-pin ATX power connector and floppy connector do crowd up on the DIMM slots though creating a very tight space for cable routing and installation/removal of memory modules. 

The LGA775 CPU socket is surrounded mostly by the same shiny copper heatpipe that we showed you above and the MSI motherboard actually use that to its advantage by having the air coming off of whatever CPU cooler you have installed cool the heatpipe fins as well.  This design was actually started by ASUS a couple of years back but it seems to have caught on quite well.  With the virtual side walls that are created by the heatpipe you MIGHT run into some issues with very large CPU coolers so keep that in mind.

On the reverse angle of the board you can see the 8-pin ATX power connection is wedged into the corner behind the external connectors part of the heatpipe making it a pain to install and remove.  

Speaking of those external connectors, the MSI P45 Platinum has the most unique layout I have ever seen on a motherboard with the “hovering” USB section above the optical audio output and eSATA connection.  The board offers six USB 2.0 connections in total, a single Gigabit Ethernet jack, 8-channel analog audio output, one Firewire port and legacy PS2 connections as well.  The opening between the NIC stack and the eSATA port is in place to allow air to flow through the case, through the heatpipe fins and out the back.

Inside the box with the MSI P45 Platinum motherboard you will find a collection of goodies including data cables, SATA power adapters, USB header connections and even a bracket that includes an additional Firewire and pair of USB ports.