MSi 970A SLI Krait Edition Motherboard Review

A Closer Look & Layout Analysis

This is a very striking motherboard. The Black and white contrast gives excellent focus on key areas such as the DIMM slots, PCIe lanes and audio channel layers. It’s a shame that there isn’t any white on the MOSFET heat sink

Look towards the I/O, things are relatively boring. However, this is the world’s first motherboard to feature USB 3.1 as standard. Along with these, you get 6x USB 2.0, 2x PS/2 connectors, Gigabit LAN and 6x HD audio ports.

Slightly further down the I/O side of the board, we are presented with the audio section, which features a defined audio area with the dashed white lines.

On the bottom of the board, we have the typical array of headers including, front panel audio, front panel buttons, USB 3.0, USB 2.0 and CMOS jumpers.

Working our way back up the other side of the motherboard, we see a decent bank of SATA 6 Gb/s ports. However, the two ports that are flat on the board could have been placed next to the other 4 to tidy up the looks.

We then move onto the 24 pin power connector and dual channel DIMM’s. An old feature which I personally really like here is the use of open-ended DIMM clips; far too many times I’ve hit issues with ‘faulty’ RAM sticks that make poor contact with the connections on single sided clips.

I normally don’t take pictures of the CPU power connector, but on this board I think it’s well executed. The MOSFET heat sink has been trimmed to allow snug fitment in between it and the I/O.