MSI Eclipse SLI Features

• Support for socket LGA1366 Intel Core i7 Processors with up to 6.4GT/s QPI link
  
• Intel X58 Northbridge
  
• Intel ICH10R Southbridge
  
• Six DDR3 memory slots supporting 800-1,600MHz memory, including Intel XMP technology supporting up to 24GB of memory
  
• Three PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots (x16/x16/x1 or x16/x8/x8)
  
• Two PCI slots
  
• Two PCI-Express x1 slots
  
• One IDE socket
  
• Two eSATA from JMicron JMB362
  
• Ten SATA ports - six from ICH10R supporting Intel Matrix RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and 5, four from JMicron JMB363 + two JMB322 supporting JBOD and RAID 0 and 1 from MSI HDDBackup.
  
• Twelve USB 2.0 ports
  
• VIA VT6308P IEEE1394a Firewire controller supporting two ports: one rear I/O, one pin-out
  
• Two Realtek RTL8111C PCI-Express Gigabit Ethernet controllers
  
• Nvidia SLI support including 3-way SLI
  
• ATI CrossFire-X support
  
• Backlit onboard power, reset, D-LED and CMOS reset buttons
  
• D-LED 2 readout module
  
• MSI GreenPower Genie
  
• MSI DrMOS + Hi-c capacitors and GreenPower

Board Layout

MSI's new look is very nice indeed - the black PCB combined with the black and blue slots and sockets sets up a nice style. The layout is generally excellent - everything is easy to get to and dotted around the edges of the board, with the main SATA ports and IDE socket facing outwards and while the four additional SATA connectors are placed in from the edge, we could still get to all of them even with a pair of GeForce GTX 280s installed in SLI. There's always a PCI and PCI-Express x1 slot free, even if SLI is used and there's absolutely no conflict to getting the memory in and out with a graphics card installed - great all round then!