MSI G41TM-E43 Motherboard Review :: Layout

Board

CPU Socket

CPU Socket area

Capacitors

The MSI board is a micro ATX board meaning that it will fit in any case designed to fit either a mATX or ATX form factor. The board itself is a red color which MSI favors with their motherboards. The upper right hand corner of the board sports a 4-pin power connector. Below that is the CPU Socket. MSI does not have any fancy chipset coolers on the board, meaning that oversize CPU coolers can fit without problems.

4-pin power

Northbridge

Southbridge

24-pin power

The 4-pin CPU cooler header is below the CPU Socket along with a 3-pin fan header. The board has two DIMM Slots that can take up to 8GB of DDR2 800MHz memory. The bottom of the board has a row of solid capacitors with the 24-pin power connector. Next to the power connector is the IDE connector, with four sideways facing SATA ports next to that. The left side of the board starts with the FP IO, then the JTPM1 header and two USB headers. The JSP1 header, the FDD connector, the JAUD and the JCD1 headers round out the connectors on the left side of the board features.

SATA

DIMM Slots

Fintek

PWM

The Northbridge has a heatsink to cool it. Note that the G41 chip does not have dedicated memory for the onboard graphics as Intel doesn’t support adding a memory chip to the motherboard like AMD and NVIDIA do with their boards. The graphics chip uses shared memory with the system with up to 2GB of system memory available to the integrated graphics. There is a Easy OC Switch which is red in the middle of the board. When enabled the Realtek RTM875T-605 Clock generator supports up to 400MHz FSB or 1600MHz on the CPU.

Expansion

USB

Solid capacitors

JTPM

Expansion on the board consists of a single PCI Express x16 slot, a PCI Express x1 slot, and two PCI slots. The PCI Express x16 slot is of course for an add-on video card if you want better graphics than the GMA-4500. Long video cards won’t block the SATA ports as they are sideways facing. The ICH7R Southbridge is located under the first PCI slot. Limited expansion is due to the micro-ATX size of the board and is adequate for most users as the board has onboard video. If a dual-slot video card is installed, the first PCI slot will also be in use.

FP IO

FDD

Sysfan and CPUFan

ALC888S

Onboard audio is provided by a Realtek ALC888S CODEC. The ALC888S supports up to 10 DAC channels that support multi-streaming (7.1+2 channel) simultaneously. The ALC888S integrates two stereo ADCs that can support a stereo microphone, and feature Acoustic Echo Cancellation, Beam Forming and Noise Suppression technology. The ALC888S incorporates Realtek proprietary converter technology to achieve 97dB dynamic range playback quality and 90dB dynamic range recording quality. ALC888S is fully HD Audio compliant.

RTM875T-605 Chip

SysFan

IDE

Rear IO

The rear I/O on the board consists of a PS/2 mouse and PS/2 keyboard port. Most people will have moved to USB mice and keyboards, but if you need them they are there. To the right of the PS/2 area is a VGA and DVI-D port. Note the lack of the four pin holes for DVI analog, you need to use a DVI Digital connector on this board. The next item on the board is a HDMI port. This allows you to connect a HDMI monitor or HDTV with HDMI to the motherboard. Four USB ports, a RJ-45 jack for the onboard Gigabit LAN, and six audio jacks round out the I/O on the board.