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So you're looking at the X58 Platinum Motherboard from MSI.
Now, you saw my review on the Eclipse.
The Eclipse is their new flagship model, little bit higher than the Platinum
which used to be the highest they had.
They had the Gold the Platinum the Silver and the... I don't know.
They have all the precious metal names, and the platinum is no longer the highest,
The Eclipse is. But the Platinum brings a lot to the table
because it's affordable. It's not a ridiculous price,
You're only going to spend $400, unlike some crazy other brand name,
X58 motherboard that doesn't really offer you anything.
There are no real disadvantages to a board like this,
it's actually got all the premium features
dual LAN, eSATA on the back and 7 Channel audio
and all this great stuff. The only thing you don't have
is the 3 PCI express slots, X16 2.0 slots with SLI.
They only support crossfire. But that's not really that bad,
so let's say you have older core 2 system, maybe 8400,
older motherboard, but you've got two nasty ATI video cards,
two 4870, two 4870X2, something like that, this is the perfect board.
it's not going to cost you way too much money
to get to the X58 chipset and the Core I7 processors.
But you are going to have a nice board
and it will support what you actually want it to do which is really, really good.
This is obviously a socket LGA 1366, 4.8, 6.8 GB transfer per second processors
the 921, 930, 940 the 965.
As you can see, you have six dims, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
For up to 24 GB of Triple channel DDR3 memory.
That can be clocked at 1066 or 1333 factory speeds,
or you can overclock using the BIOS, obviously.
The DDRs have two phase power which is awesome
and you have six phases of power for your CPU which is excellent
for overcloacking. You also have solid state capacitors
the MOSS system. What's really weird, you'll notice is that
they split the cooling between the MOSFETs and the VRMs
and your north bridge and your south bridge.
These two are connected but these two are not.
And it actually didn't have too much of an effect.
When we loaded this thing up and messed with it,
it didn't get too hot. As you know,
the X58 north bridge shifter does not get nearly as hot
as the old core 2 ones did,
the P45 and X30 and X40 because there is a memory
controller in here, the memory controller is on the dye,
so the CPU runs a little bit hotter and this one is little cooler.
That's why you see some of the more extreme boards now
that used to have water cooling on the north bridge,
they don't have it anymore and it's definitely necessary on this board,
even if you are overclocking a 4 GH on a 920 like I was using it for.
Talking about expansion ports, you have three PCI express X1 slots
right there, so those are going to be good for your peripherals.
you have two PCI Express X16 2.0s
that will run in X16, if you in populate both cards.
And as you'll see there is nothing interfering
with a long video card. Back up a little, Daniel.
There you go, see these, your SATA ports
go that way. These two might be blocked off
but these are the additional SATA ports for the ESAT
and for connectors and stuff. These go to a separate controller.
These are the ones that are going to your ICH10R
which is awesome, that supports RAID 0, RAID 1,
and these TWO only do 0 and 1 and they are controlled by a separate,
I believe either JM or a Marvel controller
that is one of these chips somewhere on the board
that I don't know because they all look the same.
Now, in addition of the slots that I just mentioned,
you also get these two PCI slots, right there.
And you'll also notice a bunch of very nice
overclocking features like power buttons, reset buttons
and this little puppy right here is my favorite, wow this is really cool!
This is hard to explain and I don't really have full grasp of it
in my head, but number one on that dip switch
that is 133 base clock, the next one is 166 base clock
if you put that one up and the third one is a 200 MHz base clock
but it's not actually the same as overclocking in the BIOS.
It's totally different. It's really weird. It actually changes a bunch of BIOS settings
for your QPR, for your Encore, for your DRAM.
a bunch of stuff. It's really weird.
Can't figure it out yet. You're going to have to do some research on it,
there is absolutely nothing on it on the internet.
But I did notice that I got some awesome overclocking with this.
My 920 got to 4GH and got a higher benchmarking in 3D.
Mark vantage has got like 28,000 by doing this first
and then overclocking, versus not doing this and overclocking it
with the same specs, same QPI, same everything
and it has got a higher benchmark here by 2,000 points and 3D mark vantage
So it's something that's definitely cool. How does it work? don't know.
But whatever. Moving on. Two USB 2.0 headers right here
so an additional four, you have a total of 12 USBs
so there is four here, there is eight on the back.
Firewire, HD audio, all that stuff also on there.
Moving over here, obviously you have 6 SATA ports
for your ICH10R, you have an additional two. You have an IDE
and you also have a 24 pin power connector right there,
so makes you get the right one. Also 8 pin power connector up here
for your 12 volt, up at the top. Come over here, there you go.
Sorry, I'm getting really bad these tours, I'm not as good as I used to be.
Alright, back to the back panel. Check this out.
Dual PS2s, you've got firewire. Interesting setup -
they have this little box up here with four USB 2.0s
your SPDIF optical output is right there, for your 7.1 channel HD audio,
or you can do the analogue down at the bottom with 3.5s.
you have an eSATA, Clear CMOS right here,
four more USB 2.0s with dual Gigabit LAN on top of that,
and then these are your analogue 7.1 Channel HD audio connectors.
And the last thing I'll tell you about this that I really liked about this board
was actually one of the features
that comes on the BIOS. It's something called M-flash.
Now this only has one BIOS chip. So, if you corrupt your BIOS
you only have one. It's really easy to reflash
and get it working again, but M-flash is interesting
because it let's you flash your BIOS from a flash drive
which, wait, wait, You're like, that's not that impressive,
it is, wait, there's something different. It actually let's you try the ROM
off the flash drive before you install it on the PC,
so you can pump in a flash drive, get it to run
the ROM that's on that flash drive to be your BIOS,
make sure it operates better make sure your benchmarks increase,
make sure whatever you want it to do is right.
And then if it is right, then install it. Or if it's not, leave your old BIOS
or change to another BIOS. I found that was pretty interesting.
And so it's really good stuff, and the X58 motherboard from MSI
is actually really good.
So I liked it a lot, 4GH - no problem on a 920,
great budget, great price great product,
only for crossfire. Don't forget.
If you have any questions, email me. I'll see you guys next time.
For more information on the MSI X58 Platinum Intel Motherboard,
type M452-6050 into the search engine
of any of these major retailers. For Computer tv, I'm Albert.
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