MSI X58 Eclipse SLI Motherboard Review :: MSI X58 Eclipse Layout

The first thing you'll notice about the MSI X58 Eclipse is the black color they used on the board. The CPU area is clear of obstacles with a copper heatsink covering the DrMOS MOSFETS with another copper heatsink covering both the X58 Northbridge and the ICH10R Southbridge. The board uses all Solid State capacitors meaning they will be less likely to break and leak.

The new X58 chipset supports up to Triple Channel memory and most high-end boards on the chipset will sport six DIMM slots. MSI includes six DIMM slots to allow up to 12GB of DDR3-1066MHz memory on the system. The manual states that if you want to have single or dual channel memory use the black DIMM slots. The first boot attempt I tried didn't work with the blue memory slots. As soon as I read the manual I fixed the issue.

MSI chose to include three PCI Express x16 slots on the board to facilitate Triple SLI or CrossfireX solutions. The spacing on the slots means that there is room for two 2-slot video cards without difficulty but the third card may block such useful things as the onboard Power, Reset and Dr LED switches. The third card may also block the extra USB 2.0 headers and the COM1 header. These are minor obstacles as the Front Panel IO will not be blocked, meaning you are only sacrificing expansion.

The ICH10R supports up to 6 SATA ports and MSI includes six ports. Four additional SATA ports are supported by two JMicron SATA controllers bringing the total onboard to 10. One excellent feature of the X58 Eclipse is the sideways facing SATA ports. This means you can install a long two-slot video card like the HD 4870 X2 without interfering with SATA ports as some motherboards do. There's also an IDE port to allow the use of a IDE HDD or DVD drive on the system. As most devices sold today are all SATA, this is useful but not necessary.

Onboard audio has definitely taken a turn for the better on the motherboard market since the release of the High Definition Audio standard four years ago with the launch of the 925X chipset and LGA-775 CPUs. MSI has decided to go one step further by including a Creative Labs X-Fi soundcard with the motherboard. This will allow the end-user to use all of the EAX 4.0 effects that X-Fi users have in addition to the High Definition Audio compliance expected of motherboards with integrated audio today.

The rear IO on the board is quite extensive but a bit clunky looking for my tastes. There are a total of eight USB 2.0 ports on the back panel, meaning that it is unlikely the two USB headers on the board will be required for most users. There's the standard PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse ports, two RJ-45 jacks for the onboard Gigabit Ethernet, and two external SATA ports for external SATA devices. A singular Firewire port and a Clear CMOS button round out the rear IO. Note the absence of audio jacks as they are on the add-on card as part of the bundle.

Creative driver screenshots