News - Further M-ATX X79 powered mainboard appears

[HEXUS]

MSI serves up X79MA-GD45.

Read more.

[this_is_gav]

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?

[kalniel]

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.

[shaithis]

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.

[UseItNow]

Now we're starting to talk, I'm a mATX nut.

[shaithis]

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?

[kalniel]

The problem I see with these smaller board is....who needs a x79 board with 2 16x PCI-E slots?

People who need beefy CPUs, ie most of the target audience. Gamers don't, hence they should go for the chipsets that are better suited for them, like skt 1156.

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

With their correspondingly weak CPUs? Doesn't fit.

[shaithis]

Who needs a cpu faster then a amd 8150/1100T or intel i7-2700k.....yet needs it in a smaller case and with a ton of PCI-E lanes (that you cannot use)?

Just trying to figure out the market......because workstation stuff normally wants/needs loads of I/O...

[ChronSyn]

People who need beefy CPUs, ie most of the target audience. Gamers don't, hence they should go for the chipsets that are better suited for them, like skt 1156.

With their correspondingly weak CPUs? Doesn't fit.

Socket 1155 weak? For the mainstream, the 2500K and 2600K (skt 1155) have been proven to be the most powerful chips available at present. Sure, they're no Xeon, but Xeon is designed for a completely different segment?

Socket 1156 is REAL old news now, and is absolutely behind 1155 now by a long shot. Both of them are reportedly behind 2011, and 1156 most certainly will be.

Honestly, yeah, this new board is nice. It seems to be ideal for those wanting to build smaller render boxes or transportable workstations. It's not what i'd expect to see, but then again, until X79 details emerged, i didn't expect to see 8 DIMM slots on anything but dual chip boards.

[Irien]

Intel seem to be pitching this platform as a replacement for socket 1366/x58. We've sold a number of uATX systems in that form factor, to people who want "the best" in terms of performance, in a petit enclosure. Even with SLI! It gets a bit toasty in there, for sure.

The thing is, there's a sizable chunk of people who don't judge their PC by the number of drive bays or expansion slots, but want the absolute best performance in the neatest package. Boards like this fill that need perfectly.

As to expansion, it might have made sense to have PCI for the forth slot, but that's semantics, really, since PCI is such a legacy connection. The second PCI-E 16x slot can take PCI-E 4x devices too, if you're not SLI-ing.