MSI Big Bang XPower II (X79) Motherboard Review

We don’t tend to look at MSI products very often, but generally when we do, we’re blown away and this is no exception with the Big Bang XPower II.

First let’s focus on the name; Big Bang. It’s certainly Big Bang by name, and Big Bang by nature as the board features an XL-ATX form factor which is worth noting before you buy, as you’ll need to make sure that you have a chassis that supports this behemoth of a motherboard. They’ve also thought about the layout extremely well, by including mass amounts of PCI-Express expansion bays, sufficient cooling and enough SATA ports to use this board for a variety of purposes, including hosting your very own server from it. There are certain parts of the design that I’m not over struck on and I was the same when Gigabyte used a similar style and that comes down to the bullets and Gatling gun. We made this clear to MSI when we popped by at CES 2012 and they respected our views on it, and thankfully we’ve not seen any repeats as of yet, so hopefully they’ve learned their lesson in this department, though it has to be said that the almost complete black design can definitely be defined as “sexy”

Feature wise, we’re glad to see full support for the likes of 4-way SLI and CrossFireX including the ability to use dual-slot graphics cards comfortably, with room to breathe at the same time. They even include extra power across the board if you are into extreme gaming or overclocking and have the need for extra juice, and as we know with any X79 board; it’s ready and waiting to give it to you.

Performance wise, we saw some good strong numbers and the assistance of the overclock to 4.6GHz gave it a nice little boost. Not stopping with that and being content, we found this board able to be pushed further, up to a massive 5GHz, falling only just behind some of the other X79 boards we’ve had pass through our labs since the launch of socket 2011. A strong feat for MSI and an acomplishment they should be proud of, and while it did require a few extra volts, when coupling this board with a cherry picked 3960X or even the newly anticipated 3970X, you may be able to push things even further still.

In terms of comparing against the Z77 boards we had on offer we saw some mixed results, with the Z77 boards obviously offering a bit more in terms of memory bandwidth and gaming performance. With more CPU intensive benchmarks, such as Cinebench, the X79 based Big Bang Xpower II board really did shine through and showed some real potential. Overclocking the CPU to 4.6GHz really did allow this board and the attached components (processor and memory) to breathe a little bit more freely and we saw some already strong numbers become quite amazing and impressive.

Price is something that X79 boards are always going to be at the higher-end of the market with and at around £300/$389, you may get a bit of change, depending on where you buy it from, but when paired up with a 3960X or even a 3930K, you’ll find that you won’t have much money left, unless you are Richard Branson of course.

Though the price is steep, it does fall well within the lines of similar boards from Asus and other leading brands, and in some cases is slightly cheaper and even packs a few more hidden gems, giving you slightly better value for money.

In our eyes, this is one of the best boards I’ve personally tested and cannot say enough kind words about it, as it seems to tick all of the right boxes and the pricing to me isn’t bothersome enough as X79 warrants this higher price and consumers moving from X58 to the X79 platform expect to pay top dollar for it and with that in mind, because it offers performance for those needing it with features that can’t be rivalled, we’re happy to award it with the Editor’s Choice Award.