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MSI P6N-SLI Platinum

The MSI P6N-SLI Platinum is based on NVIDIA’s lowest end SLI compatible chipset, the 650 SLI. MSI has a done a great job with the P6N-SLI Platinum overall, but it still has a few issues that need to be addressed. Maybe MSI is on the comeback trail?

Introduction

MSI has been a major player in the motherboard market for several years now. Established in 1986 MSI has continued to grow and expand in the market and is now one of the top 3 motherboard manufacturers in the world today. Over the last few years they've diversified into other areas with great success. One of their most successful ventures is in the video card market, though I still typically think of MSI first for motherboards more than anything. The P6N-SLI Platinum is built around the 650i SLI chipset. The 650i SLI chipset is the entry level SLI compatible offering in NVIDIA’s 600 series MCPs. Fortunately it offers most of the performance features of its more expensive siblings.

The MSI P6N-SLI Platinum supports the latest Intel® Core™2 Extreme Quad-Core / Core™2 Duo / Intel® Pentium® Extreme and Intel® Pentium® D processors. Following industry trends the P6N-SLI Platinum requires only a few components to create a working machine. The required components are: Socket LGA775 CPU, DDR 2 memory, power supply, drives and a video card. MSI integrated the following components into the 650i Ultra’s design: 1 ATA-133 port; 1 floppy port; 8 USB ports; (4 on the backplane and 2 headers supporting 2 ports each.) ; 4 SATA 3G ports; 1 eSATA port; 2 IEEE1394 ports (1 on the backplane and 1 header supporting 1 port each.); 1 GigE Ethernet port; 6 mini-headphone jacks and of course standard PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports.

Main Specifications Overview:

Detailed Specifications Overview:

Packaging

The packaging is pretty standard fair, especially for MSI. Truth be told I’ve always liked the ship design they put on the front of most of their motherboard boxes. Kind of reminds me of a Star Wars fighter. Anyway the package is pretty basic. The motherboard comes in a anti-static bag, foam on the bottom of the box and all the accessories are bagged and laid out on top of a piece of cardboard that rests on top of the motherboard itself. Pretty standard as I said, but it gets the job done. The board comes with an SLI bridge, I/O shield, drive cables, driver CD and manual.

Board Layout

The board has a nice layout. There are no glaring flaws that I experienced working with it. All the ports and connectors, headers and slots are all well placed on the board. Power connectors are mostly out of the way and logically located around the board. The PCB is generally appealing in style as well. While this isn’t a huge issue, it is nice to see. No need to use an ugly board if you don’t have to.

The CPU area of the MSI P6N-SLI Platinum is clear and free from obstruction. Like many boards these days, the P6N-SLI had heat pipes covering all the voltage components and surrounds the CPU area.

The board has 2 240-pin DDR 2 DIMM slots are located in front of the CPU socket area. There is plenty of room to install and remove memory modules even with large video cards installed. One thing I don’t like about MSI’s implementation here is their confusing color coding. You have to install a memory module in a green slot, and in an orange slot for dual channel operation. Normally you’d see two green or two orange slots and make sure both modules go in the same colored slots and for almost every motherboard manufactured today and it would be the right way to go. MSI on the other hand likes to confuse anyone working with their boards and color codes their memory slots in a way that can only be characterized as wrong. Hopefully they’ll stop this nonsense with future board designs. (Kyle’s note: Interestingly enough I argued this exact point with MSI years ago with their first dual channel memory motherboard at Comdex explaining to them that the color coding was confusing. Given that, I don’t see their stance on this changing anytime soon.)

The north bridge is located just to the left of the CPU socket. It is cooled by a heat pipe, but MSI includes a fan for installation on the Northbridge for water cooling, or extra cooling if desired. During my testing, the heat pipes stayed relatively cool during stock and overclocked testing. Really the fan wasn’t necessary, but would probably be useful given certain circumstances.

The south bridge is located in front of the PCIe x16 slot and the SLI mode selection card. It is also cooled with a heat pipe and is connected to the north bridge cooling system.

The P6N-SLI has one PCIe x16 slot, one PCIe x16 slot that runs at x8 speeds. It also has one PCIe x1 slot and three PCI v2.2 slots. The slots are well arranged with very few possibilities for improvement.

The P6N-SLI has the following ports on the backplane: 1 PS/2 mouse port, 1 PS/2 keyboard port, 1 RJ-45 port, 4 USB ports, 1 IEEE1394 port, 1 eSATA port, six mini-stereo ports, 1 SPDIF port, and one optical port.

Dual Core Center

MSI packaged their Dual Core Center with the P6N-SLI Platinum.

The MSI Dual Core Center displays information on the CPU temperature, FSB and clock speeds. Also, MSI’s Dynamic Overclocking Technology functionality can be toggled on and off from this utility as well. This utility is nice because it is simple, and allows you to overclock dynamically within Windows automatically, with no additional user intervention. This allows adjustment of the overclock on the fly without having to go through a series of reboots. To use the Dynamic overclocking utility, you need to click the D.O.T. button. Once clicked the fan in the corner will begin to spin. The arrows next to the D.O.T. button sets the pre-defined overclocks by percentage for the utility. The range is from 3% to 25%.

The advanced menu is accessed from the arrow at the bottom left of the utility main screen. To create a custom profile you only need to click on the User Profile button, and then click on advanced, and then the Clock icon. From there, the profile can be adjusted to the users liking. The nice thing about this utility is the fact that you can adjust the fan speed and thermal thresholds for each profile individually. Each of the four icons at the top of the utility corresponds to Motherboard Temperature, Motherboard Voltage, Motherboard Fan Speed and Motherboard Clock. Also at the left hand side of the main screen are your preset settings. They are AV, Game, Office, Silence, and Cool. There is also a Sharp Mode and Smooth Mode button near the bottom of the utility.