MSI Eclipse Plus X58 Motherboard Review

MSI Eclipse Plus X58 Motherboard Review

The first ever X58 board to reach goldfries.com and a darn good board it is too!

The Appearance

The Eclipse is a beautiful board – touches blue and black were used for the components such as PCI-E slots, DIMM slots and all other components.

MSI Eclipse Plus X58 Motherboard Review

Blue and black, alternately colored DIMM slots.

MSI Eclipse Plus X58 Motherboard Review

Northbridge cooler.

MSI Eclipse Plus X58 Motherboard Review

Southbridge cooler, with 10 SATA connectors. 🙂 Love it! I like that the connectors are facing outwards, thus having no problem when using longer PCB graphic cards.

MSI Eclipse Plus X58 Motherboard Review

Alternately colored PCI-E slots as well, the PCI-E x16 slots are in blue.

MSI Eclipse Plus X58 Motherboard Review

The Bundle and Details

– eSATA pack
– 3x Crossfire Cable
– 3x SLI bridge
– M-Connectors
– USB 2.0 Bracket
– X-Fi Xtreme Audio Card

MSI Eclipse Plus X58 Motherboard Review

– Green Power Genie (this device monitors all major voltages in real time, calculating power capacity and efficiency of the system)

MSI Eclipse Plus X58 Motherboard Review

– D-LED2
– Platinum Accessory Pack (4x SATA cable, 2x SATA power cable, 1x IDE cable, 1x FDD cable)
– A bunch of Manuals and installation CD.

More details on this LGA1366 board at the official product page. (Seriously, I couldn’t do better than the product page).

User Experience

There are quite a number of features I like about this board.

Firstly, the D-LED2 display unit that tells the user the stage of initialization process in a simplified manner. By pressing the D-LED2 button, the display will cycle through the details such as current base clock, temperature (place the sensor any where you want), processor voltage and NorthBridge voltage.

As you can see from the video above, there are buttons situated along the edge of the board – a power button, reset button, D-LED2 button, GreenPower button, and an overclocking dial.

MSI Eclipse Plus X58 Motherboard Review

Then there’s the other Debug LED at the back portion, reporting in a more detailed manner of the initialization process.

The GreenPower button enables and disables the APS (Active Phase Switching) power-saving technologies.

The OC Dial is a knob-based frequency adjustment feature that allows you to adjust the frequency on the fly. Each notch on the knob increases or decreases the QPI depending on the base set in BIOS.

There’s also the RESET CMOS button at the back of the board, a very convenient feature. Better reaching for the back than having to reach into the casing.

MSI Eclipse Plus X58 Motherboard Review

The audio related connectors are not present on the board, but are placed on the PCI-E 1x sound module, featuring the Creative X-Fi Xtreme (MS-4132) based on Creative CA0110-IBG chip. (refer to the earlier photo).

While the dials and buttons are a level of improvement – you still have to reach into the casing, which in my opinion, just makes the knobs and buttons rather useless unless you have a casing that’s convenient to open. And the RESET button is next to the GreenPower button. 😀 Careful.

If they had a panel that allows placement on the 2.5″ or 5.25″ drive bays, then that would truly be great!

BIOS Highlights

Besides the video shown earlier about the OC Dial, here are a few other things I thought are neat.

Here’s the basic memory setting……….

MSI Eclipse Plus X58 Motherboard Review

and here’s the advanced memory setting. Wow, first time in my life seeing so many options available – great for the demanding tweakers who have too much time in their hands. I probably would’ve dabbled into this if I was in college but those days are long gone now.

MSI Eclipse Plus X58 Motherboard Review

I also like that the BIOS is able to show further details of the RAM used. It’s correct even down to the model.

MSI Eclipse Plus X58 Motherboard Review

Lastly, the profile slots for easy loading of configuration. I wish every other board has it. It’s damn annoying to have to reconfigure everything once you reset CMOS.

MSI Eclipse Plus X58 Motherboard Review

Conclusion

Coming in at around RM 1,299.00 , what you get are the host of features – including a “better than onboard” sound system.

For the casual users, I don’t think this is the X58 board for you. For those who want fine options to tame the Intel Core i7 processors, this could be just the board for you. 🙂

goldfries recommended

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