MSI Prepares Watercooled X38 Motherboard

[malware]

ASUS Republic of Gamers motherboards will be getting some competition soon as MSI is planning to release the HydroGenX38. The upcoming motherboard will feature Intel's X38 chipset and it will come with a cooling system made by Watercool.de that will cool north bridge, south bridge and the PWM area. The HydroGenX38 will actually come in two flavours: a DDR3-only version that will be released first, followed by a 'Combo' version that will come with support for both DDR3 and DDR2 memory. The rest of the specs look the same for both boards: 4x PCIe 2.0 slots (2x 16 lanes, 2x 4 lanes), 7x SATA 3.0 Gbps ports, 2x Ethernet cards, 2x eSATA ports, 1x IDE connector, 8x USB 2.0 ports and integrated Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio soundcard. The DDR3-only HydroGenX38 is expected to cost around 379 euros.



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[panchoman]

Sweet, im so getting this board if i ever go x38. the new msi mobos are kick ass, msi seems to have fixed whatever factory issues they were having with some of their older mobos.

 

[cdawall]

welcome to the new age of MSI

remember there socket a mobos K7N2-Deltas were amazing

 

[JacKz5o]

Looks interesting.. I'm guessing that "heatpipe" isn't really a heatpipe but a water route? Since theres only one barb on each side.

 

[panchoman]

yeah, and the "blocks" are very shiny, slim and good looking. i wonder if barbs are provided? it would suck if you put some other cooler barbs in, would really ruin the look. the barbs should be painted/plated to look like a part of the cooler.

 

[driver66]

379 Euros = 535.6028 U.S. dollars :shadedshu Piss on that.

 

[karlotta]

well where does the X_FI go.. in a CF set up... poor slot layout.

 

[panchoman]

well the price is decent.. its ~300 rounded for a gigabyte x38. lets say 150 bucks for nb sb and mosfit water blocks + a good x-fi card is 100-150 bucks. if you actually took a 300 buck gigabyte, bought a nb, sb, mosfit water blocks with a 150 buck x-fi card, then you'd pay more then what you're paying for this board. and the fact that theres an excellent sound card onboard really helps cause then you can use the single pci slot for something else if the slot is avaliable for use.

 

[mandelore]

well where does the X_FI go.. in a CF set up... poor slot layout.

"integrated Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio soundcard" duh..

 

[karlotta]

"integrated Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio soundcard" duh..

duh... i just look at the pics.. but still the loss of the PCI slot do to CF is poor. Always a trade off....

 

[panchoman]

well theres always the new single slot ati's. also i sense the use of a physx card since theres 2 x16's right next to each other. also this is full x16/x16/x16/x16 right?

 

[KennyT772]

Only problem is you are required to run water through the board, unlike the water optional ROG boards. This setup is better in terms of performance, but it isnt as flexible.

 

[i_dog_69@hotmail.com]

Combo DDR2/DDR3

How does this mobo support ddr2 and ddr3 on the same board? i thought the two types of RAM were not compatable with each other. am i missing something? thanks

 

[panchoman]

Only problem is you are required to run water through the board, unlike the water optional ROG boards. This setup is better in terms of performance, but it isnt as flexible.

lets make this already 500 buck board more expensive by adding alternative heatsinks.

 

[cdawall]

no the chipset will allow it to run either DDR2 OR DDR3 you cannot use them at the same time (while both are in the system)

 

[WarEagleAU]

Agreed too damn expensive, even the ROG boards arent that much...not worth it. I dont care, the integrated card from X-fi isnt even a 150 buck card...plus, I dont like having to water cool my nb, sb and mosfets...I dont think it would help.

 

[Frogger]

I like that the MB producers are noteing that they need a better cooling solution on this chip set .... time and testing reviews will see if they got IT Right

 

[TheLostSwede]

Ok, first of all, this is MSI's bog standard X38 board. I very much doubt there will be a Combo version, as they ditched that on their X38 Diamond board due to performance issues, even in DDR3 only mode. The X38 can do DDR2, but it's not easy to design a board with both memory types due to shorter trance lenghts compared to the P35 chipset.
The X-Fi card isn't onboard and it plugs into one of the x1 PCI Express slots, just as with previous high-end MSI motherboards and it's a very basic X-Fi card which might at most be worth $30-40, it's not using the full on X-Fi chip, but rather the version which is on the more basic cards from Creative.
With regards to the water cooling seting, I'm not too sure how it works, but as someone mentioned, it doesn't look as flexible as the one on the Asus ROG boards and I doubt it'll work without being hooked up to a water cooling kit.

 

[hat]

watercooling required for motherboards now... :shadedshu

 

[Disparia]

LOL, am I missing something? If you bought a board with waterblocks, wouldn't you want to watercool it?

Otherwise, pick up the version without waterblocks.