Further M-ATX X79 powered mainboard appears

by Navin Maini on 4 November 2011, 14:34

Tags: MSI

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If you happen to be considering a M-ATX X79 powered mainboard, we reported on ASRock's offering early this week. Now, MSI's X79MA-GD45 has also popped-up, to gain some attention.

 

 

The X79MA-GD45 offers a 9-phase VRM for CPU power delivery, together with four DIMM slots - powered by a 2-phase VRM. The complement of PCIe slots is made up of dual PCIe 3.0 x16 slots and dual PCIe 2.0 x1 slots. This makes 2-way SLI and CrossFire multi-GPU setups possible.

Moving on to connectivity, the X79MA-GD45 offers two SATA 6Gbps ports, plus four SATA 3Gbps ports. There is no eSATA functionality, reportedly, but you get a dose of USB 3.0 ports, USB 2.0 ports, 8+2 channel HD audio and Gigabit Ethernet.

It's said that the mainboard will also offer a bevy of overclocking features, and is driven by a UEFI.

Image Source: techPowerUp!

HEXUS Forums :: 9 Comments

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Posted by this_is_gav - Fri 04 Nov 2011 15:20
How come some boards can cope with a measly little chipset heatsink like that, yet other boards need a much larger heatsink, some of which even need fans?
Posted by kalniel - Fri 04 Nov 2011 15:22
Depends on the case I guess. If the case has airflow to that area then it doesn't need a fan. The x58 chipset got hot there, but we'll have to see about the new one.
Posted by shaithis - Fri 04 Nov 2011 15:28
The x58 serves all it's PCI-E bandwidth from there though, the x79 does not……so now that memory controller and PCI-E are both on the CPU die, I can see why the chipsets don't need much any more.

Perhaps other manufacturers are still being cautious? Although I have seen a fair few newer boards with little passive chipset heatsinks recently.
Posted by UseItNow - Fri 04 Nov 2011 16:26
Now we're starting to talk, I'm a mATX nut.
Posted by shaithis - Fri 04 Nov 2011 16:29
The problem I see with these smaller board is….who needs a x79 board with 2 16x PCI-E slots?

Surely, if all you need are 2 wide PCI-E slots….why not go 1155/AM3?

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