Product Reviews

Like it's competitors, MSI's K8N Diamond motherboard has many integrated features. However, rather than using bog-standard onboard sound, MSI has added a Creative Live! sound chip. With support for 24-bit, 96kHz audio, it's a vast improvement over the built-in sound on other motherboards. It also has Environmental Audio Extensions (EAX), which make games more exciting.

High-end sound is just the start, though. With an nForce 4 SLI chipset it supports any AMD Socket 939 processor, dual-channel DDR memory and, of course, two nVidia graphics

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cards. As we saw in last month's graphics cards Labs test, SLI makes for the fastest graphics. At the very least you'll want to install a single GeForce 6600 GT, giving you room to upgrade later.

The K8N Diamond has plenty of PCI slots for additional add-on cards, and six SATA ports for adding extra hard disks.

It's not all good news, though. MSI has installed a heat pipe to help cool the processor while keeping the fan speed, and therefore noise, low. It's good in theory, but the design is flawed. A small fan juts out from the motherboard at a 45- angle and is held on precariously by four clips. You need to make sure it's connected properly and won't fall off, damaging your internal cards.

In our Shopper Application benchmarks, the board achieved a score of 119 using an Athlon 64 4000+ processor and 1GB of Crucial DDR 400MHz RAM. The BIOS has settings for overclocking the processor, although you risk damaging it, so only experts should attempt this.

This isn't the cheapest option, but it is a decent high-end board. If you're after the best graphics performance and sound quality, it's good value.