The motherboard's extravagant heatsinks are all held in place via spring loaded screws. The main heatsink covers both the X79 and PLX chipsets along with a small VRM module while the 'Gatling gun' heatsinks cools the main VRM module. Contact on all components was excellent so there should be no problems keeping temperatures under control.



Above we see the X79 chipset contact. The paste used was very dry but as you can see, made good contact with the heatsink. I have yet to find any of the motherboards chipsets getting very hot, rather it is the VRM module if anywhere that requires active cooling. Fortunately, the MSI flagship board does not have active cooling thanks to the large 'Crayola' heatsink.



When we first cast eye on the preview shots of the XPower II, we were all aghast regarding the 22 Phase power unit. Impressive it certainly is as not only will it provide clean, stable power but thanks to the Military Class III components used such as Hi-c CAPS, Super Ferrite Chokes, DrMOS II and Solid CAPs. Coupled together, this VRM has the capacity to output 770A which compared to a 9 phase power design equates to 2.4 times more power. Because this is a also a digital hybrid design, temperatures of the VRM are reduced on average by 14%.



Renesas provides voltage regulation via 20655 chips which incorporate a high-side MOS FET, low-side MOS FET, and MOS-FET driver. It's all very well having a massive VRM but if you do not have the quality regulators to address that power then you are asking for trouble. Thankfully, MSI have used the same quality components we saw on the MSI X79 GD65(8D).



Hidden beneath the Gatling gun VRM cooler are a set of 22 LED's depicting the amount of power in use at any one time. These LED's are joined by other LED's scattered around the mainboard, each having its own use.



Here we see how MSI have implemented their Gen 2.0 PCIe lanes by using the PLX PEX 8608-BA50BC-G controler. The ExpressLane PEX 8608 device offers PCI Express switching capability enabling MSI to add scalable high bandwidth non-blocking interconnection to a wide variety of applications while running at 5.0 GT/s.



Despite the XFI plate atop of the audio chip we see that the audio is created by the Realtec ALC898 chip, common among today’s motherboards. So where does X-FI come into it? Well that is simply the software suite used to recreate EAX HD 5.0 sound effects in games.



The MSI Big Bang XPower II certainly looks the part. Despite the heatsinks initially being cringe worthy, they are starting to grow on me. Whether I would choose them over more traditional designs I cannot say but one might suggest that MSI should be credited for their innovation as whether you like the heatsinks or not, they certainly are different!

So it talks the talk, looks the part but how does it perform? I think it's time we found out...