MSI debuts X38 extreme board and quad-speaker mini notebook

MSI HAS PLENTY TO SHOW OFF here. Besides the long-awaited Nforce680i-based P6N Diamond coming up, with integrated Sound Blaster X-Fi (but without X-RAM on it), the firm followed up with its first boards based on the upcoming top-of-the-line Intel X38 chipset.

The X38 Diamond, pictured here with MSI's watercooled R600 graphics engine, the RX2900XT, offers up to four PCI-E graphics slots (two x16 and two x8), up to 8 GB DDR3 RAM, and support for current and, we assume, upcoming 45 nm Core 2 CPUs.

Interestingly, the cooling system for the chipset and VRM's is nothing extraordinary, as you can see. For ultimate overclockers aiming for 2GHz FSB performance, youo'd be better off ripping off the heat sinks and going water or at least more extensive heat piping like on the Asus' workstation X38 mainboard.

Also, note MSI seems to like the "Chinese fan" Thermaltake heatsink we reviewed recently.

MSI also showed a bunch of new notebooks: besides the large format 600-series gaming notebooks with Turbo overclocking buttons, the S300 Crystal series collection caught my eye: the Santa Rosa Core 2 Duo-based 2 kg-class notebook has a ring of Swarowski crystals at the cover top, as well as four built-in speakers for a bit more audio playback fidelity when on the road.

Hah, maybe it could replace those old huge casette players with multiple speakers.