MSI RD480 Neo2

The red MSI PCB has no specific colour scheme - all expansion slots, minus the bottom PCI slot are white. The colour scheme on the DDR memory slots is somewhat confusing though. Rather than colouring slots for dual channel mode, MSI has chosen to colour the slots so that you need to plug your two memory modules into adjacent slots, rather than using the colour of the slots as a guide.

Most motherboard manufacturers choose to colour according to where you plug in pairs of memory modules to enable dual channel in a two by two arrangement. MSI's method is a little more confusing, as they've chosen to break the trend with an alternate colouring method. Aside from our quibbles with the memory slots, there is nothing wrong with how the board looks. If anything, it looks a little ordinary.

The 24-pin ATX connector is next to the memory slots - it's backwards compatible with 20-pin power supplies. MSI also include an 8-pin 12V connector which is backwards compatible with the standard 4-pin. Both plugs are keyed so there's no chance of plugging anything in the wrong way without forcing it in the slot. MSI advise users to use the extra 4-pin molex plug to increase stability and provide additional power distribution across the motherboard.

The power connectors are reasonably well placed - the main ATX plug is near the outside edge of the board next to the two IDE ports and single floppy port and is easily accessible. However, the 8-pin 12V connector and 4-pin molex plug are on the inside edge of the board. This could prove a problem if you're routing cables around large CPU heatsinks or graphics cards - it would have been nice to see these closer to the edge, like on the ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe.

The ULi M1573 South Bridge has support for four SATA ports but they're not natively supported by Windows XP. When installing Windows XP, you will have to use the provided floppy disk to install the SATA drivers before being able to install Windows onto a SATA hard drive plugged into the RD480 Neo2. Also, the SATA ports are only compliant with first generation SATA specifications at 150Mbps.

The board doesn't have SATA2 support at all. It's slightly disappointing considering there are more SATA2 drives hitting the market supporting the better interface. Despite the fact that none of the newest 300Mbps SATA2 hard disks are able to saturate a 150Mbps SATA bus, you do loose out on features like eSATA. The board should feature support for Native Command Queuing, but there's no clear indication of support in the BIOS.