MSI has always produced boards targeted at budget users, HTPC ones, and enthusiasts in general. But we never did see one catered especially for gamers only. As the gaming community steadily grows bigger, many other vendors realised its potential for generating income. ASUS came up with the Republic of Gamers series and it was only a matter of time that MSI followed suit. The latest P45 Diamond has been dubbed one of MSI’s newest line of gaming motherboards, check it out.
Aside from the features and design of the board, it’s the bundle of accessories and extras that affect the value of the overall product. Last time, we lamented about the fact that MSI doesn’t give enough, but we’re glad to say that we’re seeing some improvement in that area these year. Thankfully, gamers are provided with an abundant supply of cables, components of an eSATA pack, a USB/FireWire bracket, a CrossFire ribbon, all items for liquid cooling except the pump, and a Green Power Genie module. We’re all too familiar with most of the contents in the box save for the Green Power Genie. This contraption is meant to work with Green Power Center, an application that measures the exact power feeding the mainboard. Instead of adjusting the system fan based on the temperature, Green Power Center controls the power usage before the motherboard heats up to the level of overheating.
The P45 Diamond brings a refreshing change in MSI’s line of motherboards. No longer do we see the Circu-Pipe cooling solution as it’s replaced by a liquid cooling heatpipe. The northbridge, southbridge and MOSFETS are all cooled by the circuit, however, there is a water block attached to the copper heatsink above the northbridge. So if you’re into liquid cooling solutions, MSI has given you ample opportunity to set one up. While this is all good, we noticed a design flaw on one of the finned heatsinks, namely the one with MSI’s logo on it. When we tried to fit in the stock CPU cooler, it wouldn’t go in properly because that heatsink was in the way. We had to slightly push it a little so that the cooler could go in. MSI should really check this if they want to avoid upset customers. That being said, if you have an aftermarket CPU cooler, chances are, it might avoid the heatsink completely (if you get a tall one that is). The layout of the various components are well thought out, as we can see some of the SATA ports and IDE port are facing outwards to avoid obstructing long graphics cards. The floppy port however, is right next to the 24-pin power connector. As we’ve mentioned before, the power cable is considerably huge, so it’s going to be a hassle pulling out the power cable when both connectors are plugged in. You get two PCIe x16 slots for a bit of CrossFireX goodness, which is a more efficient x8/x8 configuration. We noticed that the PCIe x1 slots were positioned well so that both of them won’t get blocked; the first is placed before the first PCIe x16 slot while there is some space in between the second PCIe x1 and x16 slots. Another notable feature is the set of power, reset and clear CMOS switches on the mainboard itself. These should give gamers the extra edge when doing some tweaking.
Oddly, when we tested the board, we couldn’t get PCMark Vantage to complete even after updating the BIOS, drivers and what not. So we can only provide PCMark05 scores, but the figures alone should allow you to gauge how well the board performed. For CPU, the board earned 9,661 while the memory test showed a figure of 6,593. Graphics and HDD produced results of 13,711 and 7,014 respectively. Overall, PCMark awarded it with a whopping score of 10,476.
Performance wise, the board provided an excellent platform for gamers while MSI incorporated useful functions and added in a liquid cooling block. While the design of the board was pretty good, they missed out on a very noticeable flaw. Otherwise, the P45 Diamond seems to be a good head start for MSI’s gaming series.
MSI P45 DIAMOND SPECIFICATIONS:
PROCESSOR TYPE: Intel Core 2 Quad / Extreme / Duo / Pentium / Celeron Dual Core / Celeron
NORTHBRIDGE: Intel P45
SOUTHBRIDGE: ICH10R
FSB: 1600 (O.C)/1333/1066/800
SOUND: X-Fi Xtreme audio card
NETWORK: Realtek RTL8111C
DIMM: 4x DDR3-1600/1333/1066/800 (8GB max)
SATA: 8x SATA II
PATA: 1x
FLOPPY: 1x
PCIE x16: 2x
PCIE x1: 2x
PCI 2.2: 2x
REAR I/O:
1 x PS/2 Keyboard
1 x PS/2 Mouse
1 x 1394 port (FireWire)
2 x eSATA
1 x CMOS clear swtich
2 x RJ45 LAN jack
8 x USB 2.0
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