MSI Big Bang XPower II (X79) Motherboard Review

Taking a look at the board we can see a full-sized XL-ATX design with a unique design to say the least. The whole board features a black colour scheme across the PCB, DIMM slots and PCI-Express expansion slots too. The only real colour on this board involves the MSI Big Bang branded heatsink in the shape of a gun clip.

Also close by is where you will see the voltage check points, just between the SATA ports and ATX 24-pin connector, and keeping on the power side of things, you’ll also be able to spot the two 8-pin CPU power connectors for those exploring extreme overclocking situations, and needing the best power delivery.

Being an Intel X79 based board we find the large 2011 socket, ready for our 3960X. To each side we find a total of eight DIMM slots ready for some extreme amounts of memory. The cooling on the board is certainly peculiar with a Military Class III branded heatsink that is shaped like a chain gun. Another similar shaped heatsink is below the CPU socket and joins on to a flat heatpipe.

The other heatsink on the board includes a brightly coloured gun clip looking passive cooler with MSI Big Bang branded upon it.

Moving over to the expansion slots on the board, we can see that the Big Bang XPower II certainly isn’t lacking them in short supply. The board comes equipped with a grand total of seven PCI-Express x16 slots which allows for four cards in either Quad SLI or CrossFireX, even with larger cards that have dual slot coolers.

Further down we get a look at the various connectors and buttons on the board and find an audio header, USB 2.0, PCI CeaseFire which allows you to disable certain PCI-Express lanes, and some buttons branded as Direct OC for manual tweaking.

We also have an OC Genie button, Multi BIOS button and some front panel headers among the USB 2.0 ports. Just near the top of the image, you’ll also see an LED branded as Super Charger which works as a debug LED for troubleshooting issues when your system won’t post.

Another area that this board isn’t lacking in, is the SATA connectors with a total of 10 ports spanning across the board. Before we get in to what speeds and controllers they are, it’s worth mentioning the other connectors near to it. We find a single 6-pin PCI-Express power connector which gives extra power to the PCI-Express lanes when using Quad SLI or CrossFireX and stops the need for having a loose cable across your board, due to the location of this connector.

Also next to this is a USB 3.0 native header for those with a front panel set of USB 3.0 connectors on their chassis, or for use with the supplied back panel USB 3.0 plate.

On to the storage side of things, we find two SATA III ports utilising the X79 chipset, four SATA II ports running off of the same X79 chipset and four SATA III ports, which this time run off of the ASMedia 1061 chipset. There is also a sticker laid across the SATA ports which indicate that the two ports furthest to the right are the X79 based ports and offer the best performance for those who need it.

Finally moving over to the rear I/O, we find a nice variety of connectors. From left to right we can see a combo PS/2 port, two USB 2.0 ports, clear CMOS button, coaxial and optical SPDIF connectors, Firewire (VIA VT6315N), and four more USB 2.0 connectors. Things step up a gear next with four USB 3.0 ports (NEC D720200), two Gigabit LAN ports (Intel 82579V/82574L) and six analogue audio ports through use of the Realtek HD codec.