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A Closer Look
General
Layout
Your
love or hate of the MSI K7N2G-L/ILSR may have a lot
to do with the type of case you use. The ATX connectors
are quite near the board edge but you may find your
cables draping across the top of your CPU cooler to
get them there. This shouldn't be a problem with a
little care and a few strategically placed ties if
required. The floppy connector placement seems innocent
enough until you have a stick of memory in slot three
(green) when it can be difficult to squeeze your fingers
between the memory and the back of your drives without
putting pressure on the memory itself. Also the low
placement of the three IDE connectors may make life
difficult for users of full tower cases who may find
their IDE cables are a touch too short to reach.
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Model Shown K7N2G-ILSR
I'm not sure why but
MSI decided not to position the IDE connectors so
they aligned with the gaps between the PCI slots.
As it stands you'd have a tough time fitting even
a moderately long card in PCI slot three and you'd
have no chance at all on slot four. Any by moderately
long I should point out that even our SB Audigy
wouldn't fit in slot 4 at all.
Poor
IDE Connector Alignment
The
K7N2G-L and the K7N2G-ILSR are near identical in
their layout and design so we'll start with a look
at the "L" version then pick out the differences
in the "ILSR".
The Bundle
As
you'd expect from MSI who are rapidly earning a
reputation as the kings of bundled goodies, this
little selection doesn't disappoint either. In addition
to the software on the installation CD which we'll
look at in a while there's another CD featuring
WinDVD 5.1 channel and Supreme Foreign Language
Learning Machine which I didn't get a chance to
look at. The picture below shows the bundle that
comes with the ILSR including 2 SATA cables, S-Bracket,
D-Bracket, IEEE1394-Bracket and TV-Out bracket.
Also there are standard IDE ribbon cables, I/O plate
and instruction manual. The k7N2G-L features the
same but without the S-Bracket, the IEEE1394-Bracket
and the SATA cables.
K7N2G-L Features
 As
we discussed earlier, the K7NG2-L features the MCP
controller chip. You notice I'm trying to keep to
NVIDIA's plans here and avoid calling these chips
North Bridge and South Bridge! If I lapse you'll have
to cut me a bit of slack, old habits die hard!
Both
boards come equipped with 5 PCI slots alongside
an OEM friendly ACR slot (blue).
Socket
clearance proved to be reasonably good though once
again we see it rotated 90degrees to the usual orientation
which can be a pain with some cases that place the
power supply or horizontal brace close to the motherboard's
edge.
Our
Thermalright SLK-800 went on with bags of room to
spare, thanks partly to its design, but even so
the SLK-800 is no petite cooler.
MSI
have opted to use only 2 phase power circuit which
may seem odd until you realise that the CPU is fed
from a separate auxiliary power feed. The Mosfets
both have heat sinks installed.
P4
users will feel at home but the addition of a 4 pin
auxiliary power connector will come as a rude awakening
to Socket A veterans. Interestingly I was able to
operate the board perfectly well without the auxiliary
power connector in place but I didn't want to run
it like this for too long just in case, the board's
too big for a key chain. This auxiliary power connector
might be a problem for users with older PSUs and some
kind of adapter from a conventional four pin Molex,
or even a connector on the motherboard that would
accept a conventional 4 pin Molex would have been
nice.
In
terms of hardwired connectors you get the usual assortment
of audio jacks, that's speaker out, line in and mic.
There are also four USB 2.0 ports, 1 parallel port,
one serial port, one VGA connector in place of the
second serial port, PS/2 keyboard and mouse port and
finally LAN.
The
IGP heat sink MSI have used was clearly designed for
looks rather than efficiency. Because of its shape
a good proportion of the IGP isn't actually in contact
with the bottom of the sink. On the plus side MSI
have used plenty of thermal grease between the two
but having witnessed how warm the nForce2 IGP can
get I'd sooner see all boards equipped with active
cooling.
By
now you should be aware of the extra features available
on the MCP-T controller.
The
-ILSR features what looks like a more effective
and actively cooled sink on the IGP. This
however ties up one of only two available fan headers
on the board.
 The
Promise PDC20378 offers dual Serial ATA-150 channels
plus it also allows for an additional ATA-133 IDE
channel too. You are able to add two SATA devices
as single and separate drives are to create a RAID
array of levels 0 or 1. I haven't been able to test
this but I understand that even under absolutely
perfect conditions the architecture of this particular
Promise controller means it will never peak beyond
133 MB/sec, not that we're likely to see that happen
anyway!
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Rounding
out the ILSR package are
an
"S Bracket" which adds rear left/right
and centre/sub analogue outputs along with
optical and coaxial SPDIF.
Also
you get the "IEEE1394" Firewire
bracket, without which the added Firewire
functionality wouldn't be a lot of use really.
I can't decide if the decision to put a
4 pin (or i.link) connector on the bracket
with a conventional 6 pin connector is a
good idea or not. I've seen plenty of four
pin connectors at the peripheral end but
not at the PC end so I wonder if it would
have been better to opt for dual 6 pin connectors
as seems to be the norm.
I
remember buying an MSI board that was one
of the first ever to feature diagnostic
debug LED's and I have almost come to think
of MSI as the pioneers of this technology.
Both the -L and the ILSR models come with
MSI's 4 light diagnostic bracket.
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(Optional,
MCP2-T only)
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MSI™ 1394 Cable
(Optional)
TV
Out Bracket
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