Layout and features
We'll continue our tradition of evaluating motherboards by starting at the top and working our way down, highlighting the salient points on the way.
The first thing that we should mention is the width of this 645E Max-LRU. Considering that this is a top-of-the-line, feature-packed motherboard, we're surprised to see that it only measures 225mm across, about 20mm less than the standard ATX size, MSI certainly know how to deal with 'board real-estate.
Becoming more and more common is the location of the 12v P4 power connector. Once again, we see it grace the top left of the board, a location that I favour as trailing wires can be tucked behind the heatsink.
The area around the CPU is relatively uncluttered, we found that we could just about mount an Alpha cooler, a little more space to work with would have been appreciated. We see the first of only two onboard fan headers sitting next to the CPU bracket. The ABIT IT7 I845E featured no less than 5 fan headers, so those interested in cooling will be disappointed with only being provided with two.
The SiS645DX chipset specifications have provision for 3 184-pin DDR memory slots, we see all three here, supporting up to 3GB of non-ECC RAM. The main 20-pin ATX power connector sits in an ideal location on the right of the 'board.
The SiS645DX officially supports, and can obviously run at 533FSB (133FSB QDR), so the inclusion of a passive heatsink leads us to believe that the Northbridge runs rather coolly. In operation, the heatsink become warm to the touch, validating our theory.
The Realtek RTL8101L IC provides integrated support for onboard 10/100 LAN via a soldered RJ-45 port on the backplane. Seeing as we have 5 PCI slots, it makes great sense in including onboard ethernet. Preliminary testing showed that it was on a par with my preferred networking solution, the D-Link 530TX. We've seen this controller make increasing regular appearances on feature-rich motherboards.
The AGP slot supports both 1.5 and 3.3v video cards, thus giving it a compatibility edge over the competing I845D/E motherboards. The proximity of the slot and memory banks dictates that you cannot easily remove system RAM once a video card has been inserted, especially if it happens to be the gargantuan-sized Geforce4 Ti series of cards. We see five PCI slots of the 645 Max-LRU sitting above the rather redundant CNR slot, we'd wish motherboard manufacturers would dispense with these altogether and replace it with another PCI slot.
The specified Southbridge accompanying the 645DX Northbridge is the SiS961B, it differs from the original SiS961 SB by offering ATA133 support. As far as we can determine, this is the only noteworthy change between the two Southbridges. The only mention that we have to its upgraded status is via the tiny B0 stepping shown above. The original 961 SB contained the A1 stepping.
