MSI P6N Diamond LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Every setting I could ever want for overclocking in the bios. Solid, everything works as it should. No problems clocking my Q6600 1066fsb up to a 1333fsb and getting the equivalent of a QX6850 (price difference, about 1k :D). Allows changing voltages on things It didn't even occur to me to change before, and in nice small increments. Supports 1000Mhz HT. Does support 1333 CPUs even with bios 1.1 (set the fsb manually), but upgrading to 1.2 wasn't a problem with a bootable thumb drive. The onboard X-Fi works beatifully. It's true, if you try to install a driver from creative for it, it reports that no supported hardware is found. But the driver disk that comes with it supports everything including Vista x64 and XP x64. It beats the heck out of any other onboard sound card. It's even black to match everything else :). Comes with enough cables to use up every plug in it. Nice bonus feature. The reset jumper has been replaced with a button! very nice when experiment

Cons: Posts so fast I have to hit delete when it beeps before anything comes up on screen to get into the bios. No chance to see anything but a flicker of the nice post graphic :).

Overall Review: I used to go with only ASUS, then ASUS went down hill. I've been trying other brands to find a new favorite. This is my first MSI but if they keep this up, they're going to become my new favorite.

Pros: Booted up just fine the first time. Installation of parts was a snap. Good MOBO layout. The CELL over-clocking menu is like none I have ever seen before. After 12 hour burn in, no mis-haps or problems. The board stays nice and cool. For me, the X-Fi sounds great, I don't hear any popping or scratches *knocks on wood* . Overall a great board, especially if you are looking to do a good deal of over-clocking. I plan to with it later...just not right after I built it...I want to play with it a lot first because it is already running smooth as can be. By far, best MOBO I have used to date. *have not dealt with the RAID yet , waiting for the price of the RAPTOR X to go down so I can have 2 of those in RAID 0. I'm sure by the time the price gets to where I want to buy another one, they will have a new BIOS that controls it better.

Cons: Probably only the price, but in my opinion, I got what I paid for. All the other MOBO's I was trying to choose from had lots of different problems with many different people. Given this one only had a few reviews when I bought it, I took the chance and am very pleased I did. To me the price is somewhat more justified cause I wanted to buy an X-Fi sound card anyways, but basically got it on board...one less part to buy.

Overall Review: MSI P6N Diamond Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (Zalman Cooler) 2x1GB Corsair XMS2 Dominator 1066 GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB 1x150GB WD Raptor X 1.5Mb/s 1x500GB Samsung Spinpint 3Mb/s Samsung 18x DVD DL/CD +/-R/RW OCZ GameXStream 700W PSU Antec Spot Cool (extra cooling for RAM) Antec 900 Case

Pros: 533-1333 FSB (You have to manually change bios for all the now uncommon/new FSB's ie. 533/800/1333) X-Fi Extreme onboard 10 x 2.0 USB/2 x 1394 Dual 10/100/1000 ethernet ports Enough PCIe for SLI/crossfire

Cons: Bios is hard to navigate. Some options are hidden ie: C1E is hidden in the CPU menu. If you are going to overclock you need to turn this option off. You must hit F4 to show the option but there is nothing that tells you this. It's a bit pricey...but you get a great product.

Overall Review: This with a Q6600 and some G.skill HZ's is a monster and you save some coinage with having outstanding integrated 7.1 surround sound.

Pros: No problems running the 1333 FSB, I have the 2.66 Core 2 Duo E6750 and had no problems. 2 -1 gig sticks of generic memory, and a 8600GT OC 512 video card. Booted up first try. Didn't even have to relaod windows XP. Older board had Nvidia chipset as well. I now own 3 MSI boards and all of them run stable and fast. All with different chipsets.

Cons: Had some difficulty installing the sound drivers for onboard X-fi. After doing some check around in the MSI forums I found this. "If anyone wondering or have trouble with this on-board X-FI Xtreme sound device you will find and need to install these updates before you can install the creative drivers from MSI otherwise it will not work, they are browsed on the MSI drivers and utilities cd in \Sound\Realtek\HD\MSHDQFE\Win2K_XP\us. These updates are called the High Definition Audio Driver Package kb888111xpsp1.exe and kb888111xpsp2.exe. Then I installed the Creative drivers I downloaded from MSI website and device is recognised and working perfectly in Device Manager." You only need to install one of the files depending on the SP you are running. Also you can not be running XP SP3 when you install this update. You will need to install the X-Fi driver and apps disk following the above proceedure.

Overall Review: Always search the forums and newgroups before giving up. If you have a problem chances are someone else has as well and found the solution. Don't let all the negitive comments people write about this board keep you from buying it. Understand when you are making thousands of boards there are going to be a few that will either have issues or just won't boot up, that goes for any board and any brand. My focus would be on how good their support is. MSI I have found will respond and work with you, unlike the other big dog. Not mentioning any names here. If you build systems you will know who I am talking about. If it's a budget thing and you don't have the extra $100 for the next level up. (maybe closer to $200 after the faster memory upgrade) This board will do fine. Lots of features and the slower 800Mhz memory is not that big of a deal. I have another system running 1066 memory and it wasn't worth the extra money.

Pros: An attractive package...

Cons: The board had serious issues supporting 4GB of Corsair memory even though the modules I used were on the certified product list, and the integrated X-Fi card does not support BioShock which is the reason I purchased it. It you are a gamer, think twice before purchasing this motherboard. You will NOT be able to use drivers from Creative Labs, and the drivers from MSI are old and will not be updated regularly.

Overall Review: If the lack of sound card support isn't enough to make you walk away from this motherboard, then maybe the lack of support from MSI will. The only support is via email, and the techs responding to the messages are anything but helpful. I've open several tickets and the same thing has each time. They act like they want to help, then they offer useless advice and completely misunderstand the issues, and lastly once they cannot fix the problem they will resort to blaming you or passing the buck and blaming Microsoft.

Pros: Tons of features, great design. 6 SATA cables.

Cons: Would have liked to see support for 1066 memory. Also, the PCI-E slots don't tell you which to install video to. In case you need to know its the white ones.

Overall Review: Came with northbridge fan attached, nice to have the option.

Pros: Easy to set up, stable, good overclocker, onboard X-Fi! Definitely worth the wait. Running four 1GB sticks (2, 2GB dual channel kits) @ DDR2 800, no problems! Awesome, running a 2.66 core 2 at 3.33ghz with almost no effort. 1333fsb is Orthos stable for 16 hours.

Cons: My Crucial Ballistix would not work in dual channel mode, had to order some kingston off of their QVL list...installed them and viola! Not a single problem.

Overall Review: I called MSI about my crucial/dual channel condition, they insisted it was a defective board...I thought otherwise and ordered new ram and it turned out to be the issue. The box ships with a red sticker on the front that warns to use qualified RAM. Maybe its an intial bios release issue.

Pros: Great overclocker, awsome layout, and super fast board.

Cons: None!

Overall Review: To the last reviewer this board is very overclockable you say you cannot change voltage you are wrong if you read the book you would know that you can. You must use the page up and page down buttons MSI P6N Diamond, E6750 OC at 3.6ghz, 4 gigs Geil memory(4-4-4-12)1T, 3 Hitachi Sata2 drives striped(raid 0), 2 MSI 8800GTX, X-FI Extreme Gamer Sound Card, and Zalman 9500 to cool cpu. By the way the overclock was achieved by bumping cpu voltage up +.0125(1 setting above default) and Northbridge to 1.275(default 1.250). So as you can see overclocking is very achievable on this board so do not be fooled. And update to Bios 1.3 from the beginning http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=downloaddetail&type=bios&maincat_no=1&prod_no=1168