MSI B75MA-P45 Ivy Bridge motherboard explored

B75 is Intel’s chipset targeted at small business clients and budget users, acting as an unofficial replacement to H61 in its price point. This particular board from MSI using the B75 chipset is more orientated towards the budget user. Unsurprisingly you are going to get 22nm Ivy Bridge CPU support as well as 32nm Sandy Bridge support on the LGA 1155 socket. There is a 5 phase VRM, which almost seems to be the entry level for VRM these days, as well as four DIMM slots supporting dual channel memory solutions, you’ll be able to make use of speeds up to 1600MHz on RAM.

Expansion is rather limited but for most entry users it should be more than sufficient. There’s a PCI-E 3.0 16X slot, one PCI-E 2.0 1X slot and a single PCI. The PCI-E lanes are wired to the CPU socket whilst the PCI slot is controlled by the B75 chipset. Connectivity is all provided by the B75 chipset: 1 SATA III port, 5 SATA II ports and 4 USB 3.0 ports. Display connectivity includes DVI and VGA. Additionally there is 6-channel HD audio, gigabit Ethernet, and two PS/2 connectors. The board is driven by UEFI firmware and has MSI’s Click Bios II. RRP is stated as “below $100” but hopefully it would be around $60.

Source: TPU