![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Wednesday, May 06, 2009
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
MSI Eclipse SLI X58 Motherboard
The MSI Eclipse SLI is the premeir X58 motherboard for the Intel Core i7 processor. The design is great looking, it is feature-rich, and comes from a great company with a history of excellent products. So how did we like it and why had it taken this review so long to be published?
Introduction
Micro Star International (MSI) is no stranger to the enthusiast market or enthusiast community. Their products are generally well known and are popular with quite a few gamers and general enthusiasts and with good reason. Their products are generally solid while typically being reasonably priced. According to MSI's web site MSI's manufacturing capacity for motherboards alone is expected to reach 21 million units with capacity for video cards increasing to 9 million video cards annually. So needless to say they are a major player in the industry.
The MSI Eclipse SLI is based on Intel's X58 chipset and is therefore only currently compatible with Core i7 LGA1366 processors. The X58 chipset is paired with the Intel ICH10R south bridge. The board supports up to 24GB of DDR3 1333MHz (DDR3 1600MHz OC) memory and can handle a total of 10 SATA devices, as well as 2 eSATA devices. It supports both NVIDIA SLI/Quad-SLI Technology and ATI's Crossfire/CrossfireX technology even though CFX is not mentioned in the motherboard’s name.
The board uses all solid capacitors and sports all of MSI's most heavily touted features. Including but not limited to their Dr. MOS, GreenPower, XpressCool and RapidBoost feature sets. Really when you get down to it many of those feature names are just dreams of the marketing department but are fairly cool none the less. The RapidBoost feature refers to the onboard JMicron JMB322 controllers and their simplified BIOS control. Simply hit enter over the configuration type you want and everything gets taken care of for you. XpressCool refers to their thermal solution and GreenPower, their power savings technologies.
Main Specifications Overview:
Detailed Specifications Overview:
Packaging
The Eclipse is packaged in a very pleasant looking retail box. The board is well protected in shipping and our board arrived intact. The package contains driver disks, a manual, quick start guide, cables, I/O shield, IEEE1394/USB bracket, SATA bracket w/external power, CrossFire and SLI bridges.
Board Layout
The MSI Eclipse is one of the best looking boards MSI has ever produced. The colors are well chosen and the layout is good. My complaints about the layout are few and far between but I do have a few. Mainly the slot configuration for expansion cards and the placement of some of the onboard buttons and SATA ports bothers me. Most of these are things you can work with, but I'd have liked to have seen a better design in regard to the layout in the first place.
The CPU area is clear and free of unnecessary obstructions. In the image above you can see several of the chokes and MSI's Hi-c capacitors. MSI Claims a 40,000 hour life span on them and boast improved power efficiency. Up to 27% according to the box. In any case there weren't any problems attaching the huge Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme and 120mm fan to the board with some room to spare.
The MSI Eclipse features six DDR3 DIMM slots and supports a total of 24GB of RAM. The slots are color coded nicely and they used a color scheme that wasn't hideous as has often been MSI's standard in the past. fortunately the DIMM slots are well positioned allowing full access to them for memory installation or removal with full length video cards installed. This is a basic necessity for motherboard design in my book, but many times motherboard makers drop the ball on this simple design basic. MSI didn't so that's quite good.
The north bridge is located in the same place as it always is on virtually every motherboard I've ever seen. The north bridge is cooled with a heat pipe based copper cooling system that extends from the VRM's to the south bridge. The setup isn't overly large as we were used to seeing on older X48 chipset based boards. The X58 chipset actually runs fairly cool. During testing the chipset never felt more than slightly warm to the touch at stock or overclocked speeds.
The south bridge is located in front of the expansion slots as usual. It is covered and cooled by the same heat pipe based cooling setup that covers the VRM's and the north bridge. The cooling system seemed quite effective as operating temperatures were well within expectations at stock and overclocked speeds. The design was simple and elegant. I will give MSI credit for one thing that's HUGE for me. That is the fact that they used locking cable compatible SATA ports on the entire board. This is how things need to be done. They also used the right angle six pack of SATA ports on the front of edge of the board.
I've been wanting to see this for about 2 years now and this is the first board I've ever handled that did this right. Good job MSI. Other manufacturers should take your lead on this. Also seen in this section is the onboard diagnostic LED (D-LED2) which is quite different looking compared to what I normally see on most motherboards. This one is black with blue text rather than the green double digit 88 configuration I've gotten used to. Next to the south bridge there are also four additional SATA ports which are each connected to JMicron JMB322 controllers for a total of 10 internal ports. A single JMB363 controller handles the two eSATA ports and the legacy IDE channel.
In regard to the expansion slots, I have two complaints. The first, and most minor of which is the location of the bottom PCI-Express slot. It is positioned as such that any dual slot card would cover the onboard buttons, dip switches, and some of the headers. This is a bad move and many X58 boards seem to have similar design over sights. Additionally the slot configuration is such that 3-Way SLI is pretty much right out. This board doesn't even come with a 3-Way SLI bridge and like the Foxconn Blood Rage I looked at recently, MSI advertises 3-Way SLI as a feature of the board on their website. Though the packaging suspiciously makes no mention of the feature being supported. So right away I looked at this board and had to shake my head in confusion. We have yet another manufacturer that is advertising a feature that the very design of the board makes almost impossible to use. Using one of the 3-Way SLI bridges that come with real 3-Way SLI compatible boards is right out on this thing. The spacing of the PCI-Express slots is just so bad that use of that can't happen. Again like the Blood Rage and P6T Deluxe, (The P6T Deluxe at least is not advertised as being 3-Way SLI capable) you have to ghetto rig it with flexible and longer SLI bridges. You'll need to come up with two of them on your own since MSI was no help on that.
One good thing is that the board does come with two very long Crossfire bridges for Crossfire/CrossfireX use. This is very nice to see and I wish more manufacturers would do this. Use of the included CrossfireX bridges would only work between PEG slots 2 and 3, rather than 1 and 2. Thanks to the included bridges, you can use 1 and 2. What disturbs me most about this layout is that it was needless and appears to have been done to keep at least one legacy PCI slot available at the cost of a more sensible PCI-Express slot configuration. With just about anything you could ever need for a new build or an upgraded build being offered in PCI-Express, I really question what some of the designers of these boards are thinking. The board even includes a real PCI-Express based Creative X-Fi (Kudos for that too!), so this move defies logic.
The rear I/O panel has 4 USB 2.0 ports, 2 RJ-45 LAN ports, 1 IEEE1394a port and standard PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports. Also found here are dual eSATA ports attached to the JMicron JMB36x controller and a clear CMOS button. I'm glad more motherboard makers are including this type of reset button. Makes things far easier when overclocking with the computer case closed. Due to the fact that the sound isn't really onboard, and it is in fact provided by a real sound card, there are no onboard audio ports.