Published in Reviews

MSI X48 is a good step forward

by on30 April 2008

Index


Power-Consumption:

Our standard PSU went dead, so we had to change it and re-test other boards to give you some comparsions. Notice the IDT chip does waste about 10W even when there are no graphic-cards installed. We used as less VCore as possible, so our E8400 works fine with 1.1500V @3GHz.

Please note that other configurations may yield other results.

Image


Conclusion:

MSI did many things right. They improved the layout compared to the P35 series, used angeled SATA-connectors, all the sata-cables now have clips. As usual, the board was stable all times. Overclocking to a stable FSB of 560MHz and up to 4.40GHz for the CPU qualifies this board to be called "high-end."

We do not think that a Crossfire X board is very appealing for the masses. While you can use the ports for other cards, the IDT chip increases the power-consumption. It's our opinion you are better off with the X48C Combo board without the IDT PCIe switch chip, which does feature DDR2 memory. DDR2 is still cheaper and so is the board, so you may invest a little bit more for a graphics-card and improving the price/performance ratio.

This board does fine, but for real hardcore overclockers the BIOS is much too limited and the voltage steppings are much too crude. Besides that, the board does well and the good sign is MSI high-end boards are getting better.

The board is available for about €190,- the X48C is about €10 cheaper, but it seems currently out of stock. Besides the Intel offering, which is not an "all solid capacitor" design, MSI X48 offerings are the cheapest available, owning either of the boards is a good choice.



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Last modified on 26 May 2008
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