<!-- 2 --> IDE and SATA

I love the placement of IDE and the 6 Intel SATA ports. It helps to isolate all the SATA and IDE cables to 1 side of the casing, closer to ur HDD too, so u can use ur creative ways to hide the SATA and IDE cables. I will love it more if MSI could shift the Jmircon SATA ports beside the 6 SATA ports. Looks neater too.

Floppy & ATX power

The p[lacement is good. Likelihood, people will leave the Floppy connector untouch, so if it blocked by the ATX power connector, it is not a big deal actually.

The Mosfets

Even thought MSI market DRMOS pretty strongly, MSI still haves its northbridge, rams powered by the older Mosfets. Guess that DRMOS is really not cheap.


USB headers, and power on, reset button


The Power and reset button is located here for users using without casing a more convinent way to power on and sort.
Neatly placed on the bottom of the mainboard. So you will be able to tidy up the USB headers and front connectors neatly.


Mainboard BIOS and My personal view:
Component used:
Kingston 1GB Ram X 3
Intel E5200
ATI Radeon X300SE 128MB
AeroCool HorsePower 500W
Samsung 40GB ATA100 HDD

The mainboard BIOS is pretty nicely layout, with all the overclocking related stuff under Core-Cell Menu. Overclocking is pretty easy. With everything set to auto, FSB set to 266Mhz, I am able to boot up my E5200 to 3.33Ghz. Then I realise, the BIOS tries to be smart and fail-safe my increasing my RAM's Latency to 6-6-6-18 as I am running 800Mhz from 667Mhz.
Voltage were increased to 1.2V also.

This mainboard is able to run my Porcessor at 4.25Ghz without any sweat also, but it is unable to go higher, due to my CPU limits. At times, you might find the overclocking settings
in the BIOS confusing, so just leave it to auto and the mainboard will try to set the correct settings for stablity. That is why NR, CTY85 and me did actually during the MSI Iron Tech. Only change FSB,CPU Voltage, VTT and Northbridge, the rest all auto. ^_^

Of course, MSI tried to cut corners on cost. The mainboard has no LED lights at all. Not even power indication lights... eh... is LED really that expensive? Cos I really find the power indication Light on-board is a must. (The LED will light up the moment u on ur PSU to indicate there is current in the mainboard)

Also, after a fail overclocking attempt, the mainboard will tried to recover, and notify the user after it auto-reset the bios, but ur user preference settings is still within the mainboard. U can choose to edit from what u previously set, or have the mainboard to reset the voltage and frequency settings for you. A very handly too.

However, there are at times when bios is unable to recover from overclocking failure, and it will result in infinite Power-up and downs. (in attempt to recover from overclocking). Worst still, sometimes the mainboard will not post, as if the CPU is gone. It happened to my once in IRON TECH Comply, and I am able to remake this situation when testing this board. I believe BIOS can be improved further for this point.

One note on the OC Jumper: It does not eliminate ur CPU FSB wall. Well, it mention hardware overclocking but I find it totally the same if you input those values in BIOS. =.="


To summarise up, This is my rating:
Board Components and accessories:
5/5
Great component used, a lot of accessories given for this sub SGD250 mainboard
BIOS & Overclocking:
3.5/5
Buggy at times, but still overclocks pretty well. Find the OC jumper redundant.
Value:
Price of this mainboard is about $230 Its rival will be Gigabyte EP45-DS3, which lost out in NB cooling, beats ASUS P5Q-PRO and BIOSTAR I45 with its DRMOS and slightly better NB cooling. Though I could say Biostar I45 could offer almost similar value as MSI P45 Neo2 FR.
4.5/5
Layout:
Excellent layout, but can be improved. Missing LED is uh...
4/5

Overall, a pretty great mainboard. I believe what MSI can improve if its overclocking BIOS. Really,this mainboard hardware has great potential. Of couse, a DFI P45 mainboard would score well in OC if I were to review it...