MSI Big Bang X58 XPower review -
Product Gallery - MSI Big Bang XPower
Product Gallery - MSI Big Bang XPower
Right, there we have the MSI Big Bang XPower. That's a smoking hot feature rich motherboard IMHO. Everything on this motherboard is focused on performance, with some very delicate overclock features and slick design. The two tone (black/blue) design appeals to me very much. What immediately catches the eye are of course the six PCIe slots.
We received the final retail sample and as such it comes packed with a nice phat product bundle. Among the gear inside the kit you'll find the following:
- Big bang XPower Motherboard
- Quantum Wave audio card
- OC Dashboard
- MSI Driver/Utility CD
- SATA cables
- SATA power cable
- USB Bracket
- V-Check cables
- CrossfireX bridges
- SLI bridges
- Back IO shield
- Manual
- HDD power converter cables
To complement the motherboard the Big Bang XPower comes bundled with a PCIe x1 Quantum Wave audio card that supports THX TruStudio PC and what we like very much; Creative EAX Advanced HD 5.0 The card is seated into the top x1 PCIe slot. Now I dissected it for you as .. well I was curious if anything remotely Creative Labs was to be found on this board, nope it's all Realtek with a Creative Labs software layer.
The Quantum Wave audio card comes with 7.1 channel audio output (analog) but also coaxial and optical TOSLINKs are present. A very nicely added bonus alright. Despite looks of a dedicated soundcard, it's merely an application layer addon -- main sound is still handled by the motherboards integrated Realtek ALC889 -- yet enhanced by Creative and THX.
Today we test the Z77 MPower version, which as you'll notice is a pleasant upgrade from their Z77A-GD65 motherboard -- yet with an improved CPU VRM, more friendly warranties and a new black and yellow color-scheme which merges the Lightning series graphics cards and these motherboards a little closer together. Have a peek at what was just released, this is the MSI Big Bang Z77 MPower motherboard. You just have to be impressed by the overall looks ...
MSI Big Bang P67 Marshal review
Powered by Intel's P67 chipset, the MSI Big Bang Marhal comes with MSI's latest Military Class II design that makes use of a 24 phase (!) power SFC choke setup alongside the best quality Hi-c CAP's and Japanese made solid capacitors. Added to the mix for additional PCIe lanes is a Hydra chip, which also can be utilized to combine mix and match graphics cards in a multi-GPU setup. The board comes with 24-phase DrMOS power design, voltage monitoring points, an external overclock device called the OC dashboard, that all new EFI BIOS, dual-BIOS selectable with a simple button, and OC genie button that allows you to have say a 2500K processor run at 4200 with the flick of a switch. I'm not done though, we spot integrated audio with SoundBlaster X-Fi application (software) layer, ten SATA ports of which four are based on the all new SATA 6G. Thick heatpipe (passive and thus silent) cooling and more and more. This board is a true hardware enthusiast dream come true, or is it ?
MSI Big Bang X58 XPower review
We test and review the XPower from MSI. Last month Intel added a new processor in the line-up, the ever so strong Core i7 980 Extreme six-core processor. Seriously breathtaking, and to date the fastest consumer processor on the globe with very decent overclock potential as well. That was reason enough for most ODM to make new updates and revisions of the X58 chipset based motherboards, as next top the new processor we also have seen the gradual adoption of features like USB 3.0 and SATA3 6G. MSI is on of the ODMs releasing something really special, today we'll review the Big Bang X58 XPower motherboard. It is chucked full with the latest gadgets and features, it is equipped to make sure you get the very best overclock out of it and heck, even if you can't overclock, flick a button and the motherboard will do the work for you, completely automated.
MSI Big bang Fuzion (Lucid Hydra) review
MSI has yet another motherboard lined up in the P55 motherboard Big Bang series, ready and waiting for you. It's called the 'Fuzion' and comes with that much discussed Lucid Hydra 200 chip. Now the big deal about the Big Bang mainboard is that the board has that Lucid Hydra 200 chip that allows it to support multiple video cards of different brands and models at once. This in theory would allow you get the extra performance from your old video card and your new card even if one is NVIDIA and the other is ATI. The Hydra 200 is a real-time distributed processing engine that acts as an intelligent graphics load balancer.