EARLIER TODAY MSI hosted a pre Computex press conference intended to pique the interest of the local media, although yours truly also managed to sneak in to give you all a quick look at what MSI will be showing off at Computex. What caught our eye was the new P55A Fuzion motherboard featuring a Lucid Hydra 200 chip among its features.
This is meant to be a more affordable alternative to the X58 based Big Bang Fuzion, but to call it a budget board would be a lie. MSI has kitted out the P55A Fuzion with both SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0. Of note is the unusual configuration of the USB 3.0 ports, as MSI only fit one port to the rear I/O panel, while the second USB 3.0 port can be found standing straight up on the motherboard, just behind the rear port. This is meant to make it easier to connect it to front USB 3.0 ports on cases, although it also means that if your case doesn’t have front USB 3.0 ports, you’re one USB 3.0 port short.
The board also features two x16 PCI Express slots, two x1 PCI Express slots and two PCI slots. There’s an additional 6-pin power connector on the board which is meant to supply extra power to the two x16 PCI Express slots when used with power hungry graphics cards. The board on display had an unusual mix of cards in it, namely MSI’s GTX 470 and Radeon HD 5750, both with Twin Frozer II coolers. Although this is an unlikely combination, it should actually work, at least in some games. We’ll try to get you more details of this board at Computex next week, as MSI didn’t really unveil many details today, so until then you’ll have to make do with the pictures we snapped of the board.S|A
Lars-Göran Nilsson
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