Layout and I/O

The layout is clearly arranged. All connectors are well placed and accessible except you install a third graphic card. In this case you won't be able to push the onbaord "on/off"- and "Reset"-button. Installing new hardware is very comfortable because on the whole board there is plenty of space around the bigger components. With its 90 degree angled SATA connectors MSI lets the you arrange its cables neatly (A) and the onboard power- and reset button are very practical (B).



Altogether there are six memory slots on the MSI Exclipse which officially support DDR3-1066/1333 with up to 12 GByte/s transferrate. If you want to overclock the memory subsystem MSI says DDR3-1600 is also possible.

North- and southbridge as well as voltage converters are hold at adequate temperatures via a passiv Heatpipe (A) cooling solution. Fortunately there is still enough space around the CPU socket to install even todays biggest air cooler.



If you are looking for external connectors on the MSI Eclipse you can find two Gigabit ethernet ports, eight USB 2.0 connectors, PS/2 keyboard and mouse connector, optical S/PDIF connectors as well as firewire, eSATA connectors and 8-channel audio I/O.



To the comments