MSI P55-CD53 LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: A very solid motherboard for its price. Hardware power on/off button. It gets the job done.

Cons: Onboard SATA controllers are located where it makes it very difficult to access once the graphics card is installed.

Overall Review: For those who are looking to install performace RAM sticks that are rated at 1.6~1.65v, you MUST increase the DRAM voltage from the BIOS menu accordingly or your memory will fail to perform at 1.5v default.

Pros: Great price! I didn’t wanna spend too much money going into next-gen so I bought this and an i5 750. OC Genie pushes up to a respectable 3.4Ghz and who can be mad about that?

Cons: None

Overall Review: As another reviewer said, make sure to populate black RAM slots first, or you won’t get a POST

Pros: * Budget Price * High quality * Great looks * Good layout * Worked right out of the box * Awesome OC capabilities for a budget board

Cons: * OC Genie works, but its nothing spectacular (see other thoughts)

Overall Review: * First things first, this board is awesome. This is my first MSI purchase and I am extremely pleased with the quality and features of this board. I tried OC genie and it works, but it gave me a low OC (around 3.2ghz). So I turned OC genie off (and turbo mode) and did some manual overclocking. Without pushing it too hard, I have my core i5 oc'd to 3.6ghz @ 1.2v with my RAM running at rated specs of 1600mhz @ 8-8-8-24. An aftermarket HSF is a must if you plan on overclocking. If you are on a budget and you want to overclock and you don't need more than 1 pci-e 2.0 slot, look no further. Get this motherboard!

Pros: Great onboard sound, nice and spaced out. I like the SATA ports on the "side" of the board, because it funnels all the SATA cables off to the side of the mobo, keeping things nice and tidy. 10 USB ports!!?!! A lot, which is a plus I suppose.

Cons: I can't think of any so far.

Overall Review: This motherboard was purchased for the 3rd computer that I've personally built, and its by far the nicest and fastest board that I've bought. I don't really have a use for the OC button or anything like that because I'm running an i7 which is beastly fast anyway. Still a great board, with great onboard features.

Pros: I got a P965, p35, 2 X p45 and P55 msi motherboard built system and the P55 cd53 is by far the best looking and it has a great layout. THE OC is crazy easy ! The booklet is complete. The mobo comes with everything you need (even the 2 sata cables for your hd and dvd)

Cons: NONE !

Overall Review: If you don`t like msi for any reason go with asus :) These are the 2 brands i use to built system. Ultra stable with i5, kingston hyperX ddr1333 (4gig), asus gtx275, rosewill 850w psu, wd 640gig, win7.

Pros: I am running Ubuntu Linux 9.10 as alpha (after reading its support of the P55 chipset was best). Everything seems to be working and stable out of the box, even suspend which is a feature I love. On-board sound is better than I expected and I will use this over my SB Live card.

Cons: I am having some issues getting the sound drivers in my Virtualbox sessions of XP and Win7 to work without crackling, hopefully this will clear itself up once 9.10 comes out of beta.

Overall Review: I have enabled all the board features with my i5 CPU including Green Power, EIST, Turbo, and C-state without issue. I set CPU Smart Fan Target 45c and fan min speed to 50% and I don’t think I have ever heard it fully spool up. I went with my own thermal paste instead of the stock though. The machine idles at 75watts and seems to max at about 125watts. I am using a fan-less MSI N9400GT that runs all the 3D desktop effects out of the box in Ubuntu. I haven’t tried to over-clock yet. Testing with geekbench shows that it is 7x faster than my old AMD 1600+ box running stock, so I may wait to see how others do.

Pros: Great price for the solid board. Easy to setup. Many PCI slots and USB ports. Good audio.

Cons: Non

Overall Review: If you want more power and features, go get CD-65 or CD-80.

Pros: inexpensive.....

Cons: Didn't like my power supply, replaced it, was very picky about the seating of the ram, 4 sticks of Gskill Eco cas 7 I paid a lot for and had to play shuffle the ram till the MB was happy. Would not run at all with my 3com Wireless card, and last but not least, the Video card errors if screws are tight, had to leave it slightly lose to get it working......