MSI 890GXM-G65
Motherboard Layout:
There is not anything too incredibly special or unique about the layout of the MSI 890GXM-G65 motherboard, but there is a heatpipe cooling system for cooling the AMD 890GX Chipset and some of the power circuitry near the CPU socket. In the upper right hand corner are the four DDR3 memory slots that support up to DDR3-1333MHz by default or up to DDR3-2133MHz speeds when using an MSI overclock mode. Next to the DDR3 memory slots is the 24-pin ATX power connector.
Going south on this motherboard are the five Serial ATA 2.0/3.0 ports, the AMD SB850 Southbridge, four USB headers, and one 3-pin fan header. Four of the SATA connectors are positioned parallel to the motherboard, which leads to better cable organization and a better fit for most ATX cases. Covering the SB850 is just a small aluminum heatsink that is not connected to the heatpipe cooling system found atop the 890GX.
The expansion slots on the 890GXM-G65 include two PCI Express x16, one PCI Express x1, and one PCI slot. With the PCI Express x16 slots, when only one expansion card is installed there is full PCI-E x16 bandwidth, but if two cards are installed, there is only PCI-E x8 bandwidth to each slot. To allow for larger graphics cards the PCI Express x1 slot is positioned between the two x16 slots. The CMOS battery is also located in this area. Some of the ASICs on this MSI motherboard include the Realtek ALC889 for audio and the Realtek 8111DL for Gigabit Ethernet.
Immediately above the top-most PCI Express x16 slot is the AMD 890GX Chipset and MSI's heatpipe cooling system. For the Radeon HD 4290 IGP is also a dedicated 128MB DDR3-1333MHz memory IC. This motherboard supports AMD AM3 CPUs from the Phenom II / Athlon II / Sempron 100 series up to 140W CPUs. In the upper left hand corner of the motherboard is a 4-pin ATX 12V power connector. The rear I/O panel ports include VGA D-Sub, DVI, and HDMI video outputs for the Radeon HD 4290 IGP, one PS/2 port for keyboard or mouse support, four USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, one eSATA 6Gb/s port, one Gigabit Ethernet, one S/PDIF optical output, and six analog audio ports.