All capacitors used on this motherboard are solid aluminum capacitors, which is great, as they provide a higher lifespan over regular electrolytic capacitors plus they don’t suffer from leakage problems. Another good thing about this motherboard is that MSI is using ferrite coils instead of iron coils on the voltage regulator circuit, which have 25% lower power loss compared to iron coils.
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Figure 6: Solid aluminum capacitors and ferrite coils.
On Figure 7 you can also see that this motherboard features an EPS12V power connector that comes with a cover closing half of it, allowing you to use a regular ATX12V power connector in case your power supply does not provide an EPS12V connector. On this picture you can also see that this motherboard has another extra power connector using a standard peripheral connector. There is a problem with the location of the EPS12V connector on this motherboard: it is right in the middle of the passive cooling solution, and depending on how thick the EPS12V/ATX12V connector from your power supply is, you may have trouble installing it. On the manual MSI says that they have an optional ATX extender, a connector that raises the EPS12V connector above the heat-pipes. However, like all accessories that are marked as “optional” on any motherboard manual you won’t probably find it anywhere.
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Figure 7: Extra power connectors.
This motherboard has also a series of eight POST diagnostics LEDs. If your computer fails to turn on you can discover what is wrong looking which LEDs are turned on and which are turned off and checking on the motherboard manual what the corresponding code means. These LEDs are very bright, so bright that it hurts looking directly to them.
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Figure 8: Diagnostics LEDs.
As you can also see on Figure 8, this motherboard has a clear CMOS button, helping out overclockers.
On Figure 9 you can see all accessories that come with this motherboard. As you can see, this motherboard doesn’t come with a lot of stuff.
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Figure 9: Motherboard accessories.
