Layout:
The colour scheme is quite pleasing, a black PCB with yellow and black memory slots and red and black SATA connectors.

The MSI P35 Platinum is of course an "all-solid" design, and was expected initially at a €150,- price tag.

The voltage regulator is an 4-phase analogue part, although we would have prefered a digital VRM. The power connector is positioned under the memory slots.



The 8-pin CPU power connector is odd placed between the heatpipes of the chipset coolers. This will give you trouble during install, when you have already mounted the cpu-cooler. With revision 1.1 MSI has installed an additional adapter to the CPU-power-connector so installation is more easy now. But we can't understand why MSI did not place the connector on the right edge of the board.


The heatpipes stick close to the CPU keepout area, so removal of bigger CPU-coolers is a mess.

The ICH9R supports six SATA II ports, but lacks support for IDE. The purple  SATA ports are SATA masters. We would have liked to remain all chipset ports for internal use, because any SIL/Marvell controller can do eSATA II too, but MSI decided to take the other way around. They implemented a Marvell IDE/SATA combo, so you get an an single internal SATA port and one IDE. Two SATA ports will interfere with long two-slot graphic cards such 8800 GTX and MSI did not include 90° angled SATA cables.