MSI K9N2GM-FIH:
This board is a cousin to the K9A2GM-FIH, but this time MSI uses Nvidia's IGP chipset. While the AMD version doesn't feature any solid capacitors, MSI heeded our suggestions and used solid capacitors for the analog four+one phase VRM design. As you will see later in the power-consumption tests, that will help the board to achieve good results. Of course, you can also only go with 125W TDP CPUs.
The same is true for the ports and features, it's quite a clone of the AMD version with one PCIe x16 slot, two PCI and one PCIe x1 slot. Also, it features the same LAN and audio chips. The Northbridge cooler is quite lame. While it's lower on the left side, for usage of larger PCIe x1 cards, it's not on the right side, which drives you nuts when installing better cooling solutions such our Scythe Andy Samurai. The cooler is too close to the CPU-socket so you can't use the clips to fix the cooler properly. We fixed this issue by removing the cooler and mouting it 180° rotated.
The back-panel is also a clone of the AMD-based board with one VGA and one HDMI connector, but you will not find a HDMI to DVI adapter in the package. Also, only four USB 2.0 ports are quite a disappointment. At least you will find a Firewire-port and a LAN-port over the dual-USB-ports. More disappointing is there are only 7.1 analog audio connectors, no digital out is available.
The price is around €57,- in Euroland.
