MSI MPC 945, Continued

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As soon as you open up the mPC 845, you can't help but notice how incredibly compact this barebones PC is. Of course, this also has an undeniable impact on its extensibility: only one hard disk and a single 5.25" optical drive may be installed in these cramped quarters. A close look at disk drive connectors also reveals only one Serial ATA hookup. The manual claims an additional optional hookup is available, but it must be ordered in advance.

IDE and SATA cables are included

Arrangement of the PCIe and PCI 32-bit sockets

A WLAN card comes pre-installed in the Mini-PCI slot

The large CPU cooler includes three heat pipes

The large CPU cooler that's included with the unit uses three side-mounted copper heat pipes to conduct heat away from the cooler's contact surface. An 80mm fan is affixed to the cooler stack with screws, and blows air audibly through its many cooling fins. The more heavily the CPU gets loaded, the louder the system becomes. At heavy load, we measured noise levels of nearly 50 dB(A). As far as we can tell, both the CPU cooler and the rear-side system fan are responsible for this din.

Cooling fins on the CPU cooler

Noise levels from the rear system fan are noticeably higher under heavy load than when idling

The MSI MPC 945 accommodates two DDR2 DIMM modules

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