X-bit labs

MSI MEGA 865: Hi-Fi Barebone System Review (page 8)

Category: Mobile

by Vasily Melnik

[ 07/08/2004 | 10:42 AM ]

There’s a lot of fascinating stuff under the front panel. For example, take a look at one of the antennas of the inbuilt Wi-Fi unit (the second is identical to the first and is located to the right):

Here’s the Wi-Fi unit itself, installed into a mini-PCI slot. A Silicon Emotions BlueBird VL+ chip is nestled nearby:

The AM/FM tuner is situated near, too:

The memory slots are easily accessible:

The AGP and PCI slots are so placed that the AGP plug is dangerously close to the PSU. Moreover, you will hardly be able to use the PCI slot with a graphics card installed.

The fan of the North Bridge’s cooler found a bad place for itself – I strongly doubt its efficiency. Well, look for yourself: the gap between the cooler’s top and the bottom of the drives basket is only 1cm – too narrow for creating a proper airflow for the heatsink.

On the other hand, it would be even more risky to use just a passive heatsink here. In fact, cooling the MEGA 865 is no trivial task: it’s cramped inside and it is difficult to move or shift the chipset’s North Bridge when wiring a six-layer mainboard, considering the density of the elements.