The components list looks a little shorter than the typical high-end motherboard, but that’s only because MSI forwent any onboard audio solution to instead provide a discrete sound card.

MSI added another heat pipe sink to the space normally consumed by analog audio ports. Two eSATA ports bring the board into the modern era, while to PS/2 ports help those who prefer legacy peripherals.

Missing are any analog video outputs for the onboard graphics controller, as DVI to VGA adapters require a DVI-I connector (and associated hardware) rather than the provided DVI-D. MSI does include an HDMI adapter, and the chipset provides HDMI audio support.

Located along the motherboard’s lower rear edge, the JMicron JMB363 is responsible for the additional Ultra ATA connector, along with eSATA connection on the port panel. Its location provides an excuse for that of the extra Ultra ATA connector, since this particular interface is easily affected by electromagnetic interference when longer trace lengths are used.

Two IEEE1394 FireWire ports are connected through a VIA VT6308P controller. Because this ancient interface is far slower than internal busses, the controller’s use of one of the chipset’s five PCI interfaces isn’t a problem.

NVidia’s latest chipsets have an onboard networking controller, so MSI addresses one of its two Gigabit Ethernet ports with a simple PHY. Realtek’s RTL8111C does the job.

The second network port is controlled by Realtek’s RTL8211BL, which uses PCI-Express to provide full bi-directional bandwidth.

High-end users typically prefer a discrete audio solution rather than integrated codec, so MSI includes a Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio card with all of its recent Diamond series motherboards. MSI updated this version with an aluminum RFI shield.