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The MSI P35 Platinum is a pretty interesting motherboard, and perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of all would be the Circua-Pipe chipset cooler design. But there are a number of other little digital tid bits to mull over first.

What's first?

My first observation is that of the memory DIMM slots. MSI has aways had non-color coded DIMM slots, and it makes it a bit of a hassle to double check the user manual to set up your memory correctly. These DDR2 slots are numbered 1 through 4 from top to bottom, so dual channel mode would use the top green slot and the top orange slot. Every other motherboard manufacturer would have slots 1 and 3 (for dual channel mode) of identical colors. Odd that MSI still does this. We can see the 24 pin power connector here too.

The expansion slots are color coded, for what it's worth. That yellow PCI-e slot runs at 16x speeds, and the other white PCI-e slot is a 4x, with a couple of PCI-e 1x slots in between and a pair of old school PCI slots down south.

We get 5 SATA ports with the MSI P35 Platinum. There is one SATA port in blue (simply to indicate the primary port) and four ports (in purple) all clustered together. We can also see the single IDE port (the big one yellow one). Personally, I don't like these sideways mounted ports (difficult to plug a cable into), but it's just a new industry standard that we're going to have to live with. A decent amount of expansion possibilities, but somewhat pales to other chipsets that have boasted up to six SATA ports and two IDE (though that is arae now) ports on one board.

One floppy port (not dead yet) down under the PCI slots.

An important issue with modern chipsets is that of the amount of free space around the CPU socket. In reference, my recent review of the Asus Striker Extreme motherboard running the NVIDIA 680i chipset did have some problems with clearance around the CPU socket when paired with a large cooler. Fortunately, there's tonnes of open real-estate around the socket of the MSI P35 Platinum motherboard.

Speaking of clearance, this is a simple and effective solution on the part of MSI. The 8 pin auxiliary power connector is kinda hidden down under some of the copper heatpipes. This simple riser make power cord attachment much, much easier. That 4 pin molex power connector is just to provide a little extra juice to the primary PCI-e 16x slot for those cards that don't draw their power from the 4 pin PCI-e power supply cable. But a small interference issue popped up during board assembly.

It didn't damage anything, but it was a bit of a tight fit for our Noctua 120mm fan.

A FireWire IEEE 1394 pin header colored green for easy identification.

A veritable rainbow of USB2.0 pin headers. Note as well how there are dedicated capacitors right next to each pin header port, helping to clean the power voltage delivery to USB devices.

On the subject of capacitors and cleaning current, MSI has been quick to move to an all solid state capacitor design. Solid states are far superior to the old electrolytic type, and will help to extend the life of your motherboard. As for the ferrite cores, I counted only five living on the P35 Platinum motherboard. This would serve to indicate superior circuit design on the part of MSI.

Quite surprising was the use of solid state capacitors around the integrated RealTek ALC888 8 channel audio chip. Usually, manufacturers will resort to the old and ugly electrolytic capacitors for this and I've mentioned this many times, but not MSI.

A clear CMOS button to save grace from those botched BIOS overclocking attempts. Speaking of bad tweaks . . .

A friendly little red failure message to indicate that overclocking attempts have bombed.

MSI decided to take a slightly different route with some of the overclocking features of the P35 Platinum, most notably of which being that of the jumper overclocking control. These little green jumpers allow the user to select different FSB speeds based upon the jumper position. Take a quick look at an excerpt from the manual to get the idea.

A 200MHZ, 266MHz, and 333MHz front side bus option (times 4 for actual FSB speed). This method of jumper overclocking in nothing more than a strap on the processor. Since the Intel P35 chipset has native support for a 1333MHz bus, the 333MHz jumper overclock setting is just the native chipset speed, whilst the two lower settings are just a a strap on the set speed between the chipset and processor. It is for the most part useless. Yes, the jumpers do work (the 333 MHz and 266MHz work fine, but the 200MHz doesn't), but it's not real overclocking. It's neat, it sort of works, and most will never use it.

The standard assortment of rear I/O's; PS/2 for keyboard and mouse, a IEEE1394 FireWire port (always handy), the four USB2.0 ports are standard but oddly placed as they are risen over top the Optical I/O port. A Gigabit LAN port is completely standard, though I would have preferred dual Gbit LAN (build me a P35 server). Two more USB2.0 ports. The e-SATA ports are sweet, and have become the new connection standard for external storage. There's all of the audio ports for the likes of speakers and microphone and the sort too.

Another little neato are the surface mounted POST code lights. Not only do they provide a nice ambient glow inside a case, but they also indicate the booting status of the motherboard.

Yeah, the sequences are a little cryptic, but it beats listening to the chirps and burps of POST code a speaker. By the way, there are the requisite pins for attaching a speaker, but no piezo speaker mounted on the motherboard itself.

And finally, we can take a good long look at that crazy heatpipe cooling system.

Dubbed Circua-Pipe (many are calling it Circus-Pipe), this odd looking cooling system is actually quite effective. The above picture is of the heatsink on the VCM just overtop the CPU socket.

Here's the heatsink that helps to cool the SouthBridge chipset.

For another VCM and the NorthBridge P35 chipset, MSI developed this somewhat odd, yet effective double ring affair. Reminiscent of big top circus rings (no pun intended MSI), the Circua-Pipe design is not of the norm for any manufacturer. But MSI pulled this one off beautifully.

When I had first cast my eyes upon this pipe design, my first and foremost thought was that of interference issues with our Noctua NH-U 12 CPU coolers and attached fans. Turns out that the Circua-Pipes fit well within the ATX standards for clearance around the CPU socket and other integral parts.

In fact, I really like how the cool exhaust air passing though one of our Noctua coolers spills over onto the chipset cooler. Perhaps that'll help get us some sweet overclocks. Hey, wait a second . . .

Silly monkeys, how'd they get in here?

No matter. We'll let them play as we look over all of the bundled hardware MSI included with their P35 Platinum motherboard.