MSI P55-CD53 Budget LGA1156 board with the Greatest Performance

Introduction

 

MSI has been around for some time now. Its had some ups and downs over the years but recently its really stepped up to the plate and offered products that are not only very good, but unique. And I don't mean in that "special" kind of unique that makes you wonder what the engineers were smoking when they designed the thing. MSI's OC Genie feature for example is automated overclocking that not only works, but gets you really good results with literally no hassles. Let's face it, most of the top tier motherboard makers have good to excellent flagship boards. Most hardware review sites rarely slam any of those because almost always, each of these boards is really quite good. When you get down to the budget sector the picture often changes and while you might still get a good board, many times those are plagued with quirks or you have to trade off something good for that low price. Features, overclocking, stability or whatever.

 

Make no mistake, the P55-CD53 is a budget oriented offering. While it isn't a bottom dollar or loss leader type of offering, you won't find CrossfireX or SLI support, or even USB 3.0 and SATA 6G among its features. What will you find? Rock solid stability and overclocking that is really unbelievable for a board with such a minimalistic approach to its design. The P55-CD53 motherboard can be purchased at Newegg for about $110.

 

 

 

The MSI P55-CD53 is an attractive looking yet small board that doesn't impress too much by its looks. There is no sea of power phases. There is no heavily stylized heat pipe assemblies, cool slogans, multi-meter measuring points, or a ton of really cool looking LEDs. There are far too many legacy PCI slots on it and only one PCI-Express x16 slot. Really this isn't the type of board you get excited about when you're used to seeing motherboards that cost $250 or more crossing your test bench all the time. This board, like many others is a P55 Express chipset based board designed for use with Intel's Core i3/i5/i7 LGA1156 offerings. What floored me was the four phase power design. Yes you read that right, 4 power phases and that's it folks. Though the old adage of "quality, not quantity" certainly does apply to power phases on motherboards. Actually, according to the back of the box, there is another single phase which they refer to as "1 phase Dr. MOS".

 

Physical examination of the board confirms this as there is another phase near the CPU socket for a 4+1 configuration. Additionally the back of the board's box makes mention of the phases being capable of 1000KHz operation which is pretty stout. That's not quite up to par with something along the lines of the EVGA X58 3X SLI Classified, but pretty good given the board's price point. From what I can tell through physical examination of the board, it looks like MSI went with three phases on the memory slots. This seems to be pretty standard on higher end boards and it's good to see this filtering into more budget oriented offerings as well. The board also supports DDR3 memory speeds up to 2133MHz, which is impressive. It shows that while this is a more budget oriented board, it is still made with the enthusiast in mind. To that end MSI also included their "Direct OC" function which essentially amounts to plus and minus keys on the motherboard PCB that allow you to overclock in real time, through hardware while being inside a Windows OS. While MSI has their own clever names for their feature set this is a feature that very much resembles features we've seen on other boards from ASUS and others.

 

This brings me to the next feature I want to talk about. The "Winki" feature. Yeah, I know I don't really care for the name either. It accompanies the slogan "Explore your world in the blink of an eye." I have to admit that my first thought when I saw the Winki manual while I was un-boxing the board was a scene in Ace Ventura Pet Detective where Jim Carrey shouts, "He found Captain Winki!" Which is in reference to a scene that's a little disturbing to say the least. I couldn't get over that for about five or six minutes. At any rate the purpose of this feature eludes me to some degree though I can think of a few uses for it. Essentially it is a proprietary OS which you can install onto a flash drive and boot from. The Winki OS allows you to perform some basic tasks with the machine without loading Windows onto the machine. It has web capability, instant messaging, photo viewing, Skype support, and a file manager. Outside of diagnostic use for someone with only one computer, I can't honestly see much use for this. I think enthusiasts will probably ignore this and use a Linux boot CD if they need something along these lines. This feature is similar to one found on the more recent ASUS boards but instead of being embedded in hardware the Winki OS has to be installed onto a flash drive or other disk.

 

Unlike most boards hitting the market now, this one does not have USB3.0 or SATA 6G support. It does support eight SATA 3G ports, two of which are provided by the JMicron JMB363 controller chip. The usual and excellent "OC Genie" feature is supported as well. I'm glad to see this because it works very well on other MSI boards that have it. The board features only a single PCI-Express x16 slot and therefore Crossfire and SLI are unsupported features. That is unless you are running SLI or Crossfire on a card ala the GeForce GTX 295 or Radeon HD 5970.

 

Following industry trends, the MSI P55-CD53 only requires a few components to create a fully functional machine. The required components are: LGA1156 CPU, DDR 3 memory, power supply, drives, and a video card. MSI integrated the following components into the P55-CD53: 8 SATA 3G ports, (6 via the P55 chipset and 2 via the JMicron controller), 14 USB 2.0 ports (10 ports on the backplane, and 4 ports available via 2 headers supporting 2 ports each), 1 gigabit Ethernet port, six mini-headphone jacks, 1 PS/2 keyboard port and 1 PS/2 mouse port. The MSI P55-CD53 is a pretty lean board in general.

 

 

Main Specifications Overview:

 

 

 

Detailed Specifications Overview:

 

 

 

 

Packaging

 

Packaging is really basic but our board arrived intact and well protected. The accessories included are fairly minimal including; User guide, quick installation guide, OC Genie booklet, HDD backup user guide, "Winki" user guide, driver disk, two SATA cables, 4-pin Molex to SATA power cable, IDE and floppy cables, I/O shield and OC Genie sticker.

 

 

 

 

Board Layout

 

 

 

The layout of the P55-CD53 is excellent. There really isn't any room for me to complain about. Everything from the location of the power connectors, to the expansion slots, memory slots, SATA ports, and headers are all well thought out. I can remove or install memory modules with a large video card installed, and the CPU area is very clean. MSI did a good job here.

 

 

 

The CPU socket is among the cleanest I've seen on any modern motherboard. Due to the minimal amount of capacitors and power phases the CPU socket area seems a little too empty. You should be able to fit the largest coolers you can think of on this board without any problems.

 

 

 

The MSI P55-CD53 has 4 DDR 3 DIMM slots for a total maximum memory capacity of 16GB. The memory slots are appropriately color coded and the memory slots themselves are clear of any obstacles that could prevent the use of taller memory modules or RAM coolers. Again as I said earlier, you can install RAM with the video card in the system which is always a good thing.

 

 

 

The P55 Express chipset is a unified design unlike most other Intel chipsets. Therefore the south bridge and north bridge are one in the same. The chipset is located where the south bridge used to be housed on older designs. It is sandwiched between the SATA ports, PCI-Express x16 slot, and the first legacy PCI slot. It is cooled by a small passive heat sink that has been made flat to avoid interfering with peripheral card installation. During stock and overclocked operations, the heat sink never went past "being warm to the touch." Not terribly scientific I know, but it seemed to be adequate at the very least. The board's 6 black SATA ports are attached to the board's P55 Express chipset. The blue SATA ports in the corner are attached to the JMicron JMB363 controller. The IDE ports and floppy controller are also part of the JMicron solution.

 

 

 

 

The P55-CD53 has an excellent slot configuration. Though I have to say that I have to question the purpose behind including 3 PCI slots on a modern motherboard. I guess this could be useful for some people, but I think only a small niche of individuals would want this many PCI slots at this point in time. There is only one PCI-Express x16 slot here so Crossfire and SLI are right out. Still there are plenty of PCI-Express x1 slots included on the board. Two of which are placed where you can access them even with a video card equipped with a dual slot cooling solution is installed.

 

 

 

The backplane of the P55-CD53 is clean, but devoid of many of the usual connectors we are often used to seeing. There are no eSATA ports, SPIDF ports, or anything like that. What we do have are ten USB ports, PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, one RJ-45 Ethernet port and six-mini-stereo jacks for audio output. So again this is a pretty no frills solution.

 

 

Control Center

 

MSI has changed its bundled utility out for something a little more sleek, and a little leaner. This one is simply referred to as the "Control Center" and it is more streamlined that software / monitoring / overclocking tools that I've seen from MSI in the past. Basically we are left with some elegant looking windows with simplified functionality.

 

 

 

Initially system information is displayed defaulting to the motherboard category. Additional information is separated by sub-category allowing us to easily identify what all the information pertains to. Important information such as BIOS version and processor information is displayed here. You do see information for basic audio and video settings, as well as the network controller. Under the CPU menu on the left hand side we can see more detailed information about the installed CPU. CPU clocks, stepping, manufacturing process, and of course cache information are displayed here. On the left hand side we can also see a section for memory. This shows not only what type of memory, and how much is installed, but the SPD tables are viewable here as well.

 

 

 

Under the Overclocking section things change a bit. Under the overclocking section we only have a basic tab, which allows you to do a fair amount of the things I've ever seen software overclocking tools allow you to do. I'm not sure why it says basic, and has no advanced menu, or why it doesn't just say "advanced" or nothing at all. Base clock, CPU Vcore, PCH, DRAM voltage, DDR VREF, and even fan thresholds are found here. Additionally there are Green Power settings. Here you can setup power saving profiles, or disable them. You can also monitor your power savings over time. Under the Advanced Green Power settings you get the mainboard and LED tabs. You can reduce the number of power phases in use, and adjust system fan speeds. You may also save your settings to be used as profiles later on. The LED tab allows you to turn on or disable the motherboards CPU power phase LEDs.

BIOS

 

The MSI P55-CD53 uses the American Megatrends Incorporated BIOS or "AMI" BIOS for short. BIOS version 1.3 was used for all screen shots and general testing.

 

 

 

The BIOS of the P55-CD53 is pretty standard fair for boards of this type. Everything is divided into categories and within those categories are settings that pertain to them. The BIOS for the P55-CD53 in general is very basic, yet robust enough to make most people happy. The standard CMOS features menu contains the time and date settings, floppy drive settings, halt, and a sub-menu for system information. System information is pretty basic. It outlines the BIOS version, build date, installed CPU type, installed memory, the CPU's current operating frequency, and processor cache information. The advanced BIOS features menu contains a boot sequence submenu, BIOS flash protection, full screen logo, MPS, IOAPIC settings, HPET, etc.

 

 

 

The Integrated peripherals menu contains all your settings for the motherboard's integrated hardware. Here you can control legacy USB settings or disable the onboard LAN controller, LAN option ROMs or adjust the secondary RAID controller. Which in this case is the JMicron JMB363. Also there are two additional submenus here. One is the On-Chip ATA devices menu and the other is the I/O devices menu. The former contains settings for PCI bus mastering, and the SATA controller mode. The I/O devices menu only has COM and parallel port settings. These are disabled by default as you'd need an I/O bracket to use them anyway. There are headers for these on the motherboard. The power management setup screen has the obligatory ACPI settings, restore on AC power loss, and wake up event setup settings.

 

 

 

Next is the hardware monitor or "H/W monitor" for short. The H/W monitor contains chassis intrusion settings, CPU Smart fan target, and controls for both "SYS" fan headers should there actually be anything attached to those. Also displayed is the PC health status. CPU temperature, system temperature, and fan speeds are shown here. At the bottom below those are voltage ranges for 3.3v, 5v, and 12v power. The green power menu has two settings in it. CPU phase control, which is your active phase switching. This setting allows the system to disable unnecessary power phases in order to reduce power consumption. The system will switch which phase is active at any given time to reduce heat and "wear" each phase evenly.

 

 

 

The cell menu is MSI's fancy term for "overclocking stuff". Like other boards that use the Cell menu, this one displays the current CPU and memory frequencies at the top. This one also shows the current QPI frequency settings. Below that we have the CPU specifications and CPU feature submenus. You can toggle your CPU cores here as well as enable or disable C1E and EIST. The adjust CPU base frequency is the bus clock which determines the processors final clock speed. The OC Stepping menu is basically a semi-automatic way of overclocking. This is just like the CPU level up feature found on ASUS boards. Essentially you just tell the board what CPU you want to mimic, and the board takes care of the rest. Though it can't add support for HyperThreading or add extra cores, it certainly can increase your CPU speed. While some people may or may not find this useful, I don't. The OC Genie works VERY well and I'd suggest that if you want hassle free overclocking, that's the method to use. However there is nothing wrong with having additional choices.

 

There are also two settings that pertain to overclocking before you start scrolling down into the rest of the Cell menu. Those are OC Genie button operation and the base clock button. These of course enable or disable the OC Genie and plus/minus buttons on the board's PCB. I have no idea why you'd want to turn them off, but you can. Stepping back a bit to the earlier submenus, the CPU specifications menu gives you the basic CPU specifications and gives you yet another submenu. This just shows you what technologies the CPU supports. MMX, SSE3, etc. The CPU Feature menu gives you the ability to adjust CPU features such as EIST, C-State, execute disable, and virtualization. You can enable or disable all of them. Jumping back to the Cell menu itself, we see more submenus and more settings.

 

 

 

The first of these is the Memory-Z menu. This shows you two settings for viewing individual modules SPD tables. From here you can also view XMP support information if your memory supports this feature. Back in the Cell menu again we see Clockgen Tuner, and a whole host of other settings. Chief among them is the PCI-Express frequency adjustment. Then we get into voltage settings. There aren't as many as I've seen on other higher end boards, but you can adjust DRAM voltage, CPU voltage, and CPU PLL voltages. PCH voltage can also be adjusted. Lastly in the Cell menu is the Spread Spectrum settings which are usually best left disabled for overclocking.

 

 

 

We also have the M-Flash menu which allows you to update each of the board's BIOS ROMs independently. You may also backup the BIOS ROM from here and store it anywhere you like. Lastly we have the overclocking profile menu. This is where you can define and save settings into profiles. Here we can see a default profile which I can reload at any time.

 

Overall I found the BIOS to be easy enough to navigate and robust enough to allow me to get the board to do what I wanted even in regard to overclocking.

Subsystem Testing

 

NOTE: For all Subsystem Testing, an Intel Core i5 750 (2.66GHz) and 2 x 2048MB Corsair Dominator TR3X6G1866C7GT ver 2.1 DDR3 1866MHz (7,8,7,20,1T @ 1.65v) memory modules running at DDR3 1333MHz were used. The CPU was cooled with a home brew water cooling setup consisting of a Swiftech MCR320 triple radiator, 3x120mm fans, Swiftech MCP655-B pump, and a Swiftech Apogee GTZ water block which was modified to work with socket LGA1156 motherboards.

 

 

 

Sound Hardware

 

The P55-CD53 uses the Realtek ALC889 which is a very common solution as far as integrated audio goes. This one is setup to deliver 7.1 channel high definition audio. According to MSI's web page the P55-CD53's onboard audio is capable of 24-bit / 192kHz playback which is pretty standard these days. They tout it as "Lossless" audio playback for Blu-Ray content. There is no advertised DTS or Dolby Digital 5.1 support. Not that I would have expected it.

 

 

 

Audio – Subjective Listening

 

For subjective listening you want to listen to something that covers a range of sound types. For this portion of the review I went with Disturbed, Indestructible.

 

CD audio playback was flawless as expected.

 

 

Audio – Microphone Port Testing

 

The onboard audio MIC-IN port was tested using a Logitech Internet Chat Headset. Spoken words were recorded from the Windows Sound Recorder found under the Accessories\Entertainment folder in the start menu within Windows XP. The recording was made with the Microphone Boost option disabled, then enabled. The Microphone Boost option is found within the advanced menu under the microphone section with in the Volume Control Menu.

 

With the microphone boost option disabled, the recording sample was audible, but heavily distorted. With the microphone boost option enabled, the recording was clearer but a little on the loud side at default volume.

 

 

Drive Performance

 

To test the capabilities of the on board USB 2.0 connections, we used an ACOMDATA HD060U2FE-72-USB 2.0/FireWire HDD connected first to the USB port. SATA drive tests were performed using Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX hard drives on all SATA headers. The SATA drives were used for testing in RAID 0 16k block size configurations on all applicable controllers. Testing was also conducted using the same model SATA drives in a stand-alone SATA configuration on all applicable controllers. All drive benchmarks were done using the open source Iometer program.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this test it comes as no surprise that the P55 Express SATA controller rules the roost in RAID0 mode. The JMicron JMB363 is actually within a percentage point or so of the Intel chipset, but still a win is a win. However, the JMicron solution is really well implemented here to come so close to the performance of the Intel offering, and deliver such consistent behavior.

 

 

 

Network Utilization Tests

 

Hagel Technologies’ DU Meter software was used with Windows Task Manager to determine the performance levels of the onboard network interface. DU Meter was used to measure bandwidth and transfer speeds, while Windows Task Manager monitored CPU utilization on the test system. For the testing, a 750MB Archive file consisting of several compressed WMA/MP3 files was used for the large file transfer, and 750MB worth of MP3/WMA files were used ranging in sizes from 3 to 30MB was used for the small files transfer test. The test was performed using a plenum rated category 5e crossover cable to bypass any traffic, routing or other transfer issues and possible packet loss or corruption that can be caused by a router/switch or hub. The cables were connected between two test machines, one using the onboard NIC(s) of the board being reviewed and the other is an Intel EXPI9400PT 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI-Express Gigabit Ethernet adapter installed into a test machine using an Intel D5400XS motherboard.

 

The MSI P55-CD53 has a single Realtek 8111DL PCI-Express Ethernet controller integrated into it. From what I can tell the 8111DL is an improved version of the long lived 8110 controller integrated into more motherboards than I could probably count. Certainly more than I can remember. When I say improved I am not certain of the specifics of their differences, but typically boards using the 8111DL have significantly better network performance than those using the older 8110/8110C controllers.

 

LAN1

 

 

 

The small files download test yielded excellent results with a maximum transfer speed of 71.98MB per second. The average transfer speed was also good coming in at 56.74MB per second. CPU usage was a very respectable 5%. In the upload test we saw even better results with a peak transfer rate of 96.37MB a second though the average was a bit lower at 43.48MB which was a little worse than that of the download test. CPU usage stayed at 5% in this test as well.

 

 

 

In the large files download test we saw similar results to those of the small files test. The maximum transfer speed was 70.33MB a second with an average of 56.71Mb a second. This is really close to the previous test though CPU usage reached 7% here which is still reasonable, but higher than in the previous test none the less. With the large files upload test, we got results that almost mirrored those of the small files test but not quite. The average was quite a bit higher here at 71.83MB a second but the maximum transfer rate peaked at about the same at 97.74MB a second. This impressive performance came at a higher price though as the CPU usage reached 10%. Again reasonable, but higher than what we saw in previous tests.

 

 

 

Test Systems

 

The following system configurations were used for the Sandra memory benchmark graph, as well as all graphs listed under the Application and Gaming Benchmarks sections:

 

 

 

Graphs are labeled as follows: Motherboard - CPU Clock - Memory Clock

 

 

 

Sandra Memory Bandwidth Buffered Integer

 

 

 

Note that all results above were obtained running the installed memory in Dual Channel mode except for our ASUS P6T6 results that use triple channel DDR3 at 1600MHz.

 

Sandra memory scores are right where they should be.

 

 

 

Sandra CPU Drystone ALU (2009 v1542)

 

 

 

In the Sandra CPU test we see scores that are within the expected range of the test configuration.

 

 

 

Hiper Pi v 0.99B

 

 

 

In this test the P55-CD53 is right where it should be.

 

 

 

wPrime v2.00

 

 

 

We see acceptable performance from the P55-CD53 in this test. Not stellar, but acceptable.

Multimedia Benchmarks

 

Outside of gaming and encoding, there are few applications on the desktop that will push our systems to their limits. Especially when we start talking about dual core processors that are becoming the norm now days. Some encoding apps are really starting to shine and become usable by the masses.

The benchmarks below all represent very real world situations just like you would run into at home while encoding video from your camcorder - or while using a picture editing program - or while encoding music for your iPod - or making movies with something as simple as Windows Movie Maker - or encoding a DVD for saving it to your hard drive to allow you easier access to the content.

We have simply timed our various tests on the different systems and supplied you with the amount of time it took for the system to fully build the file. Scratch disks were used properly as well as making sure we were not bumping into any IO bottlenecks elsewhere.

 

Graphs are labeled as follows: Motherboard - CPU Clock - FSB Clock - Memory Clock

 

 

DivX Converter 6.6.1 Pro Codec 6.8.4

 

 

 

In this test we see nearly identical performance across the board.

 

 

 

Lame 3.98.1

 

 

 

Here we see more excellent results as the P55-CD53 hangs with the best of them.

 

 

 

WinRAR v3.80

 

 

 

In the WinRAR test the P55-CD53 slides into nearly last place with only the Phenom II X4 being the only system behind it.

 

 

 

TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress v4.6.2.266

 

 

 

In this test we see pretty much the same results across the spectrum with only the LGA1366 based test system showing significantly better performance than the P55-CD53 achieved.

 

 

 

Videora IPod Converter

 

 

 

Another excellent showing for the P55-CD53.

Gaming Benchmarks

 

As always, these benchmarks in no way represent real-world gameplay. They are all run at very low resolutions to try our best to remove the video card as a bottleneck. I will not hesitate to say that anyone spouting these types of framerate measurements as a true measuring tool in today’s climate is not servicing your needs or telling you the real truth.

The gaming tests below have been put together to focus on the processor power exhibited by each system. All the tests below consist of custom time demos built with stressing the CPU in mind. So much specialized coding comes into the programming now days we suggest that looking at gaming performance by using real-world gameplay is the only sure way to know what you are going to get with a specific game. Our CPUs & Real-World Gameplay Scaling would be a great place to start.

 

Graphs are labeled as follows: Motherboard - CPU Clock - FSB Clock - Memory Clock

 

 

 

Lost Planet

 

 

 

Again we see virtually identical performance across similar test systems in this heavily threaded benchmark.

 

 

 

Call of Juarez

 

 

 

In this test we see virtually the same performance out of all the test machines as this test is very GPU limited.

 

 

Quake 4

 

 

 

All P55 board scores here are easily within the acceptable margin of error.

 

 

 

FarCry 2

 

 

 

Here the P55-CD53 takes a tiny lead among similarly clocked systems.

 

 

 

Crysis SP Demo

 

 

 

In Crysis the P55-CD53 drops to the back of the pack in regard to the Intel based test systems. Again within the margin of error.

Overclocking

 

Simply put, overclocking the P55-CD53 was easy. I wanted to try the OC Genie out and see if it worked as well as it had on other more expensive MSI boards we've looked at recently. The answer is a definite "Yes!" Using the OC Genie alone I reached a very stable 3.49GHz overclock with a 205.5MHz BCLK on our retail i5-750 processor. That's impressive for an auto-overclocking utility. It literally took about 1 second for this to work. After pressing the button and starting up the machine it all came up normally and I didn't really notice anything until I opened CPU-Z and checked the results. I performed some stability testing on this configuration and after 16 hours I didn't have one lockup. I had Prime 95 going and let it run overnight. It was an awesome experience. I checked the settings in the BIOS and found that the board didn't alter many settings.

 

So I used the Direct OC feature to see how far that would take me. The answer is 210MHz BLCK while being perfectly stable. It was "mostly stable" up to about 222 or 223MHz though I never could get it to stabilize fully for long term loads at those speeds. Of course once OC Genie is used, most of your settings become locked out. You can see what they are, but you can't adjust them. At 224MHz BCLK the machine ran, but launching Prime 95 caused the system to reboot on me. While using the OC Genie feature, one thing did disappoint me and that was the memory speeds. They amounted to DDR3-1232MHz (616x2) speeds which I found to be a little under whelming.

 

Switching to manual overclocking I inched the BCLK up to where I knew it could go. Long story short the OC Genie pretty much had things dialed in perfectly. I more or less needed the same settings it used to get the job done. However I did get away with slightly less CPU VCore and greater memory clocks. Essentially this board needs a fair amount of CPU voltage and a little bit more memory voltage than I've seen higher end boards use. Memory had to be set to 1.701v in order to have stability at DDR3 1600+ speeds. I tried multiple configurations all of which were perfectly stable under torture testing. Below are three configurations. The first is just with the OC Genie and Direct OC features. The second are manual overclocking settings. The second group shows a lower BCLK with a higher CPU and memory clock. The last one is the highest stable BCLK I was able to achieve, with the highest stable memory clock I could reach with it.

 

 

 

3.49GHz (205.5 x17) DDR3 1232MHz

 

 

 

 

3.79GHz (180.6 x21) DDR3 1805MHz

 

 

 

 

3.66GHz (215.5 x17) DDR3 1723MHz

 

 

 

 

Essentially overclocking the P55-CD3 was a fun and rewarding experience. Normally budget boards, even ones that overclock well, do not overclock this well.

 

 

 

Conclusion

 

 

 

Dan's Thoughts:

 

When I pulled this board out of the box I wasn't very excited about it. You get spoiled working with expensive boards all the time. Much of the time lower end boards are quirky and a little tougher to deal with than the flagship products. The P55-CD53 wasn't like that at all. It was flawless from start to finish and was very easy to work with. When it comes to the enthusiasts perspective the P55-CD53 is hard to match. The board is reasonably priced at roughly $110 or less and It is an amazing overclocker. It was extremely stable at both stock and overclocked speeds. In total I must have had this thing under torture testing for upwards of 20 hours without it skipping a beat.

 

 

 

 

Kyle's Thoughts:

 

The fact of the matter is that if you were to take the Pepsi "Benchmarking and Overclocking" Challenge with this motherboard and many that cost in excess of $400, you would never know the difference. Obviously when you get to hardware features things will look a lot different.

 

The MSI P55-CD53 is a hell of a board. I thought it might be a bit light in the stability arena, but it did not fail in our Torture Testing even while incubated in 45C+ temperatures with basically no airflow. I literally had not one problem with this MSI motherboard.

 

 

The Bottom Line

 

MSI has built a great motherboard with the P55-CD53 at a great price. It is no-frills, but has everything you need to make a killer gaming rig on the cheap. A good Patriot 4GB Viper memory kit will run you about $115 for CAS 7 stuff. Couple all this with a $195 Intel Core i5-750 (The same CPU we used for benchmarking and overclocking testing.) and you can end up with a brutal gaming machine that can crunch through movie and music encodes easily.

 

While we usually reserve our "Gold" awards for new cutting edge hardware, we feel as though the MSI P55-CD53 truly deserves a Gold nod as it provided excellent overclocking and stability at a great price. (If you need SLI or CrossFireX support or a x4 PCIe slot, the Gold Award Winning MSI P55-GD-65 can be had now for $139 after MIR.)