MSI Big Bang XPower Motherboard

On-Board Peripherals (Cont’d)

MSI Big Bang XPower has two Gigabit Ethernet ports, controlled by two Realtek RTL8111DL chips, which are connected to the system using PCI Express x1 lanes, and thus not presenting any potential performance issues.

In Figure 7, you can see the motherboard rear panel with PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors, clear CMOS button, header for the overclocking panel (OC Dashboad), FireWire port, six USB 2.0 ports, two eSATA-300 ports (the black one is shared with a USB 2.0 port), two Gigabit Ethernet ports and two USB 3.0 ports (blue ones).

Figure 7: Motherboard rear panel.

Another feature present on Big Bang XPower is POST diagnostics display, where you can see through a two-digit code what component is malfunctioning if your computer doesn’t turn on. This feature only works if the overclocking panel (OC Dashboard) is installed.

Figure 8: POST diagnostics display.

Like other motherboards from MSI, this product comes with an operating system stored inside the motherboard read-only memory that allows you to access the Internet without needing to load the operating system or even without having a hard disk drive installed. This feature, called Winki, is identical in concept to the Express Gate feature available on motherboards from ASUS and the eJiffy feature present on motherboards from ECS.

This board comes with interesting overclocking-related hardware features that we will explore later.

In Figure 9, you can see all the accessories that come with MSI Big Bang XPower. On the installation CD there is 60-day trial version from Norton Internet Security 2010.

Figure 9: Accessories.