Review - MSI Big Bang XPower X58

[hellgate]

Till date MSI was producing the Big Bang series of motherboards cased on P55 chipset (Big Banf Fusion, Big Bang Trinergy etc.). The Big Bang series is supposed to be the top of the line series motherboards from the MSI stable. In fact it’s this series that has implemented the Lucid Hydra chip for the first time ever.

Since the launch of the i7 980X, most of the manufacturer’s came with their flagship products, like Asus Rampage III Extreme, Gigabyte X58A-UD9 etc. Now it was MSI’s time and they came out with the Big Bang XPower based on the X58 chipset. Another reason of hashing out new
motherboards based on an old chipset is the arrival of SATA 6 and USB 3.0
So let’s have a look at the real product:



As we can see the board looks really well with a Black PCB with Blue as well as Black slots.

Now here’s how the retails package looks:



The accessories that are part of the retail package:


Here’s the complete list:
• 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

The audio card up close and personal:



Now this is a completely different card than what MSI used to supply with the X58 Eclipse SLI. That was full blooded Creative X-FI Extreme, but this one still runs of the on-board ALC899 codec with a THX software layer to improve the audio processing.

The board layout:



The first thing that catches your eye is the 6 PCI-E x16 slots. The board supports 4-way CrossFIreX and 3-way SLI (the absence of the xtra NF200 controller prevents the board from supporting 4-way SLI). Other than the PCI-E x16 slots we have a PCI-E x1 slot for the audio card, six ram slots (rated at 2200MHz OC’d), 6 SATA 3 slots controlled by ICH10R SB (black in colour), 2 SATA 6 slots controlled by the Marvell controller, the OC Genie button ( this one really works, oc’d my i7 930 to 4.1GHz at the touch of a button). There 2 8 pin CPU power connectors and 1 6 pin pci-e power connector to feed thos extreme overclocking sessions.



The Back I/O panel consists of :
• 2 x PS/2 ports
• 2 x eSATA / USB combo ports
• 1 x Clear CMOS button
• 1 x IEEE1934
• 5 x USB 2.0
• 2 x USB 3.0
• 2 x Gigabit NICs
• 1 x OC Dashboard connector port



Here you can also see the new EZ DIMM slots, an idea lent from ASUS. Pop the DIMM in sideways, secure it with one click and you are ready to go.

Enough for crap talk, now it’s time for action:

The hardware used :
1> Core i7 930 (4.5GHz cooled by CM Hyper N620)
2> MSI Big Bang XPower X58
3> 3*1GB DDR3 1333MHz 7-7-7-20
4>MSI GTX 470 (oc'd to 750MHz on core)
5> CM Silet Pro M 850W
6> HAF 922

The board easily and effortlessly overclocked the i7 930 to 4.5GHz. Initially I used vcore value of 1.425v, later on with some tweaking set it to 1.4v. Here are some benches:








My only gripe with this board is that fact that it does not have a IDE port, I know it’s out dated, still people do have IDE devices.

Other than the above mentioned drawback, the board has been a superb performer, rock stable at overclocked settings.

Guys this is my first ever review. Please let me know on the things that I have missed out.

Thank you all for reading.