MSI H57M-ED65 Motherboard

On-Board Peripherals

Intel H57 chipset is a single-chip solution. The basic features provided by this chipset include six SATA-300 ports with RAID support (RAID 0, 1, 5, 10), no support for parallel ATA (PATA) ports, 14 USB 2.0 ports supporting port disable, embedded Gigabit Ethernet MAC (Medium Access Control) and eight x1 PCI Express lanes.

MSI H57M-ED65 provides all the six SATA-300 ports, plus a seventh SATA-300 port controlled by a JMicron JMB363 chip. Four of the SATA connectors are placed rotated 90° and facing the motherboard edge, so they won’t be blocked if you install a long video card on the first PCI Express x16 slot. The other three connectors are placed a little bit close to the second PCI Express x16 slot, but in a position that the video card should not block them.

Figure 4: SATA ports.

MSI H57M-ED65 has one eSATA-300 port on its rear panel, also controlled by the JMicron JMB363 chip.

Even though Intel H57 chipset does not provide a parallel ATA port, MSI H57M-ED65 has one, also controlled by the JMicron JMB363 chip.

From the 14 USB 2.0 ports supported by the chipset the motherboard comes with 12 of them, four soldered on the rear panel and eight available through four motherboard headers. Two FireWire (IEEE1394) ports are available, one on the rear panel and one through an internal header, controlled by a VIA VT6315 chip.

This motherboard has a parallel and a serial port, shown in Figure 5. In order to use them you need adapters that don’t come with the product.

Figure 5: Parallel and serial port headers.

Audio is generated by the chipset using a Realtek ALC889 codec, which is a professional-grade component, allowing you to professionally work with this motherboard for audio editing and conversion (e.g., converting LPs and VHS tapes to digital format) without the need of an add-on audio card. The audio section provides 7.1 audio with 24-bit resolution, 108 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the outputs, 104 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog inputs and 192 kHz sampling rate for both inputs and outputs. MSI H57M-ED65 comes with an on-board optical SPDIF output, making it a perfect product for a high-end media center or audio editing computer. You can have one coaxial SPDIF output by installing an adapter (that doesn’t come with the board) on the available SPDIF out header available on the motherboard. Analog audio outputs use completely independent jacks, so you can hook-up an analog surround speaker system up to 7.1 without needing to “kill” the line in and/or mic in jacks.

MSI H57M-ED65 has a Gigabit Ethernet port controlled by a Realtek RTL8111BL controller, which is connected to the system through a PCI Express x1 lane, thus allowing this port to achieve its maximum performance.

In Figure 6, you can see the motherboard rear panel with Mouse PS/2 connector, keyboard PS/2 connector, VGA output, DVI-D output, HDMI output, DisplayPort output, optical SPDIF output, FireWire port, four USB 2.0 ports, eSATA-300 port, Gigabit Ethernet port and independent 7.1 analog audio jacks.

Figure 6: Motherboard rear panel.

As you can see, this motherboard has all kind of video connectors available today: VGA, DVI-D, HDMI and DisplayPort. However, only two of them can be used at the same time.