bit-tech.net

MSI X79 sneak peek

Published on 19th October 2011 by Harry Butler

Four DIMM sockets and the heavily cooled power circuitry surround the LGA2011 socket. Click to enlarge.

With Sandy Bridge E NDAs tying our hands when it comes to coverage, we were resigned to a long wait before being able to show you the LGA2011 gear coming your way. Happily, some sneaky so-and-so at MSI has obliged us, providing the below NDA-dodging sneak-peek photos of MSI's X79A-GD65 LGA2011 motherboard.

The quad-channel memory is in full effect, with four DIMM sockets on either side of the CPU socket and the CPU power circuitry crammed above it, topped by a hefty looking heatsink. Elsewhere there are on-board power buttons, one touch overclocking, on-board POST display and on-board USB 3.

In terms of PCI-E slots, it looks as though the board will boast five full-size PCI-E slots, along with a 1x PCI-E slot sandwiched in the middle. CrossFire and SLI support are also evident, as are eight SATA ports, four of which are SATA 6Gbps.

It'll be a while yet until we can bring you our full review of the board, or Sandy Bridge E itself, but it's good see board info start to leak out.

MSI X79 sneak peek MSI X79 sneak peak photos emerge

Click to enlarge

Like the look of MSI's LGA 2011 debut? Are you planning to buy Sandy Bridge E and an LGA2011 motherboard as part of your next upgrade? Or is good old Sandy Bridge still enough for you? Let us know in the forum

35 Comments

Discuss in the forums Reply

WarrenJ 19th October 2011, 14:11

Do you think this will make the SR-2 board redundant?

GuilleAcoustic 19th October 2011, 14:20

This is what I'd call a teasing

http://www.rfpcb.com/pictures/misc/i-sayz-moar-frut-moar.jpg

damien c 19th October 2011, 15:25

I can't wait for the NDA to be lifted and if the rumours are true about it launching next month it certainly will be a good month, especially if I get enough cash on my B-Day and Payday to be able to buy one.

WarrenJ 19th October 2011, 15:37

Think I might do the upgrade if my boss comes through with the cash for crimbo bonus.

yassarikhan786 19th October 2011, 15:39

Mmmmm.... Quad channel memory

Cr@1g 19th October 2011, 16:00

Old News look here? http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/lga-2011-idf_5.html

Gigabyte & MSI

RealBeast 19th October 2011, 16:23

Can't wait, but just curious -- what's with the molex connector on the corner of the board? Just an engineering sample thing?

VikArmo 19th October 2011, 16:39

FFS Intel, leave me alone - I AM BROKE!

Omnituens 19th October 2011, 16:58

Sigh, I hate it when they change the channels, means I have to replace yet another part of my rig if I upgrade instead of recycling it :(

Arghnews 19th October 2011, 17:21

Sandy bridge-e... an expensive dream for most of us :D

mecblade 19th October 2011, 17:27

Might sound like a silly question, but will there be an Ivy Bridge-E next year? Might pull the trigger >: )

KayinBlack 19th October 2011, 17:34

Yes, there will be an IB-E.

mecblade 19th October 2011, 18:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by KayinBlack
Yes, there will be an IB-E.

Excellent.

montymole 19th October 2011, 18:30

all comes down to money and not everyone can afford such luxury yes its nice to see them benchmark results but will this system make my 2500k@5.0Ghz a slow system or do anything more for me day to day ?

coolmiester 19th October 2011, 18:42

<---- waiting patiently for the Dual LGA2011 X79 boards to hit the market ;)

Farfalho 19th October 2011, 19:02

Y U DON'T STOP PROVOKING INTEL?
I know intel has the upstakes in the cpu war and i'm tempted to a 2500k but with this msi board, the colour scheme, just perfect for my pc and the modding I will be doing but I'm more broke than ever!

The news have officially became torture

mrnathan92 19th October 2011, 19:20

Well I was saving for a bulldozer but obviously I am still saving and if this will be in the near future then this will be my new build :)

Ayrto 19th October 2011, 19:35

Many are hoping that the i7 980 may drop some more. They'd probably sell out if they dropped the price to (say) £320-350. Though Bulldozer has put the ball firmly in Intel's court

karagiosis 19th October 2011, 20:12

What the heck is that molex connector doing there? O_o

SolidShot 19th October 2011, 21:07

its chilling, probably for a molex powered cpu fan?

Roskoken 19th October 2011, 22:06

ZOMGZOMGZOMG

MILITARY CLASS 2!!!!! HARDWARE!

Now all I need is my degree in Computer Science 3 and I can build my Gundam JUST LIKE ON THE MSI WEBSITE WOOOP!

cesmadj 19th October 2011, 22:25

If this preview is to judge by then it is NOT looking too impressive
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-3960x-x79-performance,3026.html

thetrashcanman 20th October 2011, 00:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by karagiosis
What the heck is that molex connector doing there? O_o

its generally to provide extra power to the pcie lanes, I think its identical to whats on my Rampage III extreme.

slothy89 20th October 2011, 03:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by thetrashcanman
Quote:
Originally Posted by karagiosis
What the heck is that molex connector doing there? O_o

its generally to provide extra power to the pcie lanes, I think its identical to whats on my Rampage III extreme.

That would be my theory too. Extra power for quad SLI/xFire. Why they can't use SATA or ATX 4-pin power I'll never know :p

fluxtatic 20th October 2011, 05:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by slothy89
Quote:
Originally Posted by thetrashcanman
Quote:
Originally Posted by karagiosis
What the heck is that molex connector doing there? O_o

its generally to provide extra power to the pcie lanes, I think its identical to whats on my Rampage III extreme.
That would be my theory too. Extra power for quad SLI/xFire. Why they can't use SATA or ATX 4-pin power I'll never know :p

True, but I'm using every single SATA connector I have on drives (OD & HDD), but I'm not using a single Molex now that I don't use IDE drives. Same with the 4-pin ATX - where are you going to find a PSU with more than an 8-pin or 4+4? (I could be wrong - I've never had occasion to look for that as a feature.) Molex makes a lot of sense for this application, although a right-angle plug at the edge of the board would be nice.

fluxtatic 20th October 2011, 05:20

Oh, yes - HAHA! Take that, Intel fans! We AMD people have no such troubles with going broke because of all the awesome new hardware constantly flooding out!

Did that sound bitter? 'Cause it's totally not...Intel could have 2 Netburst-esque missteps and AMD would still be behind *sigh*

Denis_iii 20th October 2011, 12:17

MSI just need to copy Asus EFI bios and i'd be in else ROG for me.

the_kille4 20th October 2011, 14:40

i just wish that a mobo manufacturer can try making a 90 degree angle 24 pin connector.

Anyway this "preview" is already quite old... but then I never checked bit-tech for the latest teasers anyway.

This motherboard is only the few X79 boards that can put 8 sticks of ram... although I don't see a gamer using that many although you can put a total of 64GB on a board since Corsair launched their Vengence 1600MHz RAM recently.

Although I am definitely get a LGA 2011 setup done, I will probably wait for the next stepping. Either it will be more power of the launch of an 8 core SB-E

the_kille4 20th October 2011, 15:39

By the way here are some images from vr-zone...

http://limages.vr-zone.net/body/13775/87b_vrz.jpg.jpeg
http://limages.vr-zone.net/body/13775/87c_vrz.jpg.jpeg
http://limages.vr-zone.net/body/13775/87a_vrz.jpg.jpeg

damien c 20th October 2011, 15:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by the_kille4
i just wish that a mobo manufacturer can try making a 90 degree angle 24 pin connector.

Anyway this "preview" is already quite old... but then I never checked bit-tech for the latest teasers anyway.

This motherboard is only the few X79 boards that can put 8 sticks of ram... although I don't see a gamer using that many although you can put a total of 64GB on a board since Corsair launched their Vengence 1600MHz RAM recently.

Although I am definitely get a LGA 2011 setup done, I will probably wait for the next stepping. Either it will be more power of the launch of an 8 core SB-E

I remember seeing a EVGA board that had that 90 degree angle 24 pin connector but I cannot remember which chipset it was for.

Not many of the board's as you say are going to have 8 ram slot's but as you say gamers will only populate 4 as that is all they will need, but anyone using it for a profentional means would probably use all 8.

I am also going to be upgrading to Sandy Bridge E, but it will only be a 6 core as Intel have said there won't be a 8 core due to TDP for desktop pc's, but they will be making them for servers.
http://wccftech.com/intel-sandy-bridgee-processors-limited-cores/

Will have to see what the cpu is that they release in the 2nd quarter of next year as that may be a 8 core but who know's it, might just be a 6 core with a stock speed of over 4.0ghz which would be rather nice and should allow some crazy overclock's.

I saw something earlier though and it was a preview on another site where they had a few MSI board's and cpu's and they were messing with overclock's, and what made me laugh was that they said they were only mildly overclocking the cpu's towards the end of the preview but earlier on they said the speed was approaching 5.0ghz, so if that is a mild overclock I wonder if these thing's are going to hit 6-7 ghz?

shanky887614 20th October 2011, 19:25

im going to see what is better performence wise, im still on core 2 duo and really need to upgrade (well new pc most likely)

before i can play the new assassin's creed and battlefield (more bothered about assassins creed)

worked out i can build a decent pc build arround £5-600 give or take

Anfield 20th October 2011, 23:43

Not enough Sata 3 ports on X79, when will Intel finally catch up to AMD in regards to Sata connectors provided by Chipsets?

xaser04 21st October 2011, 09:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by damien c

I saw something earlier though and it was a preview on another site where they had a few MSI board's and cpu's and they were messing with overclock's, and what made me laugh was that they said they were only mildly overclocking the cpu's towards the end of the preview but earlier on they said the speed was approaching 5.0ghz, so if that is a mild overclock I wonder if these thing's are going to hit 6-7 ghz?

Depends entirely on what they classify a "mild overclock" as.

It could be that they were only pushing the cpu slightly so there is plenty of headroom (as you allude to), or it could be that 5GHz is as far as they could get without spending hours playing around with the bios to try and get every last Mhz (thus meaning 5-5.2GHz is more likely the upwards threshold for "normal" overclockers).

Jasio 21st October 2011, 11:26

Looks good- although I'm not a fan of Gigabyte boards, I'll hold off until Asus releases their teaser pics of the upcoming X79/LGA2011 boards. But wow, 8 DIMM slots? So are we looking at 8x4GB - 32GB? Awesome. Strap a 8 core processor on there and you're flying.

The lack of SATA 3 Ports is a bit disappointing, and I am curious if Intel will still only use 2 x PCI-E 2.0 8x links for their onboard ICH RAID controller- as 600MB/sec both ways is beginning to really slow down systems where users opt for 2 or more SATA3 SSD's- and the cost of a good external RAID controller is still quite prohibitive.

But a X79 board + 6 or 8 Core Processor + 4 SATA3 SSD's in hardware RAID-10 w/ 4-6GB cache ... drool.

slothy89 24th October 2011, 03:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jasio
Looks good- although I'm not a fan of Gigabyte boards

Ah... This is clearly an MSI board not gigabyte lol...

For gamers I think 1155 SandyBridge is still going to be the value for money platform. Especially on e Ivy Bridge hits.