MSI 870A Fuzion Power Edition Motherboard Review

👤by James Clewer Comments 📅02-08-11
Closer look


Starting at the top of the board you can see the AM3 socket. MSI have created an open and expansive area around the CPU socket which will allow clutter free install. Also in shot is the 4-pin PWM CPU power socket.


The AM3 socket.


Furthest right you can see the four DIMM slots. Just above and to the right of these we can see five of the powerstage Phase indicator lights to identify what state of power usage the CPU and MCP are at. At the board edge there is also the 24-pin 12v socket and a 3-pin chassis fan header.


The DDR3 slots.


Further down the right side of the board is a large pancake heatsink covering the AMD SB850 southbridge chip and the Lucid Hydralogix Fuzion. It is low profile but its large surface area should allow sufficient cooling.


The SB850 and Hydralogix heatsink.


Around the base of that heatsink are the standard bottom right side components including the six SATA 6.0Gbps sockets, various header connectors and the now ubiquitous power and reset buttons. Also present are a 'Green Power' button and an 'OC Genie' button. One interesting point of note is that the power, reset and green switches are capacitive - no mechanical switch... just finger contact needed!


SATA sockets and capacitive control buttons.


The lowest section of the board is home to a firewire header and three USB headers. As you can see the bios battery is also sat here.


Headers.


Above these are the six expansion slots including two PCIe 2.0 x16 slots, three PCIe x1 slots and a single standard PCI slot. There's good separation between the x16 slots to allow a free breathing dual slot card or even a triple slot card at a squeeze!


The PCIe and PCI expansion slots.




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