Now I have finally figured out what is the purpose of the mysterious ATX Extender. The arrival of this unusual accessory was inspired by the massive chipset cooling system designed for MSI P35 Platinum mainboard. Eight-pin processor power connector is stuck between three heatpipes and is very hard to reach. They had to find a way to make this connector taller for easy plugging/unplugging of the power cable.

There are no components hanging beneath the processor socket on the reverse side of the mainboard PCB. Those few elements that do exist along the imaginary line connecting the retention holes in the board will hardly prevent you from installing cooling solutions with a backplate, so there is no need to worry about it.

Let’s take a look at the schematic layout of MSI P35 Platinum mainboard, which will help us evaluate the design peculiarities even better:

Two PCI Express x16 slots are a definite advantage of MSI P35 Platinum board. The second PCI Express x16 slot works at 4x speed and the two of them are placed at a sufficient distance from each other to accommodate graphics cards with massive cooling systems onboard. By the way, MSI decided to remind us of the good old times when we controlled the FSB frequency not from the mainboard BIOS but using jumpers. There are two jumpers between the PCI Express x16 slots that serve to set the desired FSB speed:

However, when it comes to clearing CMOS, there is no old-fashioned jumper but a much more convenient button. I only had to use it once: to check if it was working at all :) Every time the mainboard would freeze or wouldn’t start because I over-overclocked it, it would reboot on its own. At first it would boot and shut down three times or so, and then start offering to press any key other than “Del”. After that I could either save the current settings or restore defaults.

Another advantage of MSI P35 Platinum mainboard is very conveniently located power and six fan connectors. Speaking of the drawbacks, we should warn you that if your system is equipped with a long-PCB graphics card, it will block the memory slot clips. Besides, they chose not the best spot for the FDD connector.

The sound on MSI P35 Platinum mainboard is implemented via an eight-channel Realtek ALC888 codec, and Fintek F71882FG is in charge of input and output operations. There are another two controllers next to the South Bridge in the lower right part of the mainboard PCB. One of them is VIA VT6308 that provides two IEEE1394 ports, and another one is Marvell 88SE6111 that brings one IDE Ultra DMA 66/100/133 connector and one SATA connector in addition to another four and two eSATA implemented in the chipset.

The mainboard rear panel carries the following connectors and ports:

• PS/2 keyboard connector;
• PS/2 mouse connector;
• 6-in-1 sound block;
• Six USB 2.0 ports;
• RJ45 network connector;
• Two eSATA ports;
• One IEEE1394 port;
• Optical SPDIF Out.

I was about to praise MSI Company for keeping the PS/2 mouse connector, unlike ASUS. But unfortunately, I couldn’t, really: the mouse wouldn’t work with the freshly installed Windows Vista OS. Strange as it might seem, but it worked just fine with Windows XP. Even the Microsoft DOS driver works perfectly well with contemporary PS/2 and USB mice, so I am not cure that it was an OS issue. At least, I have never come across a problem like that with the same mouse in Windows Vista before.

Another peculiarity of MSI P35 Platinum mainboard is a great number of light emitting diodes on the PCB:

Two of them, LED1 and LED3, indicate if the mainboard receives no power. The LEDs next to expansion slots light up when there is a card installed in the corresponding slot. The remaining LEDs around the chipset South Bridge serve to report possible malfunctions. The problem can be identified with 16 different LED combinations described in the user’s manual. This LED system serves as a specific POST-code alternative.