MSI Big Bang-XPower II Pro Reviews

From the start, $390 is a lot to spend on a motherboard, even in the land of X79. The whole range starts from as low as around $230, all the way up to $500 and beyond (if rumors of future models are true). For that money, you want function, performance, aesthetics, and an assurance that nothing will go wrong. MSI seem to have done well in light of this and have produced a good board. For the XL-ATX form factor on the MSI Big Bang-XPower II, we get a total of ten SATA ports (four SATA 3 Gbps, six SATA 6 Gbps) and six USB 3.0 ports (four on the back panel, two via a header). Also on the board is a 22-phase power supply, 8 DIMM slots (two per channel), dual Intel network controllers, novelty heatsinks in the shape of a gun and a magazine, and seven full length PCIe slots which default to x16/x16, x16/x8/x8 or x16/x8/x8/x8 in multi-GPU mode. Along with power, reset and DirectOC buttons, the two-digit debug LED and rear panel clear CMOS, we have OC Genie which gives a 4 GHz overclock, and a button to switch between two BIOSes. The MSI BIOS is top notch, giving a very easy to use system for adjusting and updating, and the included software is quite good as well. The bundle includes a USB 3.0 front/back panel, a novel eSATA back panel, eight SATA cables and a variety of flexible SLI connectors.

All manufacturers try to present their products in the best way. Therefore, you will never come across any mention of the fact that MSI mainboards are the only ones out there that are unable to change the processor Vcore in Offset mode. Therefore, no one will ever tell you that MSI Big Bang-XPower II is so huge that there are very few cases out there that can actually accommodate it. However, it looks like no one really thought about possible incompatibility when they designed MSI Big Bang-XPower II. And that is because this mainboard wasn’t intended for common everyday work inside a system case. It is a platform for extreme overclocking experiments and breaking records, and therefore there is no need for normal dimensions, nominal settings or power-saving modes. In fact, I think this line from one of the recent press-release could be a good illustration of the situation today: “ASRock, one of the three largest mainboard makers…” That’s it: ASRock has already become No.3, and it looks like MSI lost its positions in the top-three category. Of course, there are many ways to attract attention in the overclocker and enthusiast world, but unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly difficult to overlook the fact that despite multiple advantages, the sales of MSI mainboards continue to drop and the company has really hard time maintaining its position in the market. Does it mean that something is wrong with MSI mainboards after all?

The Big Bang XPower II is one of the nicest enthusiast motherboards MSI has ever produced. It is forward looking in terms of layouts and features and gives you more than enough expansion slots to do most anything you could desire with a desktop board. Military Class III also rings true with this motherboard as it was found to be "bulletproof" in our testing. The XPower II showed to be one of the coolest under fire LGA 2011 motherboards we have seen as well. Kudos to MSI for its efforts. Now just get rid of the having to double click on every single item in the "DoubleClick BIOS II" and it will be near perfect.

The MSI Big Bang XPower II has the performance to back up the Big Bang moniker. If you're in the market for an 'Xtreme' Intel X79 motherboard the MSI Big Bang XPower II should be on your short list and comes highly recommended!