The Board - A Closer Look

Along with all the other changes the MSI Next-Gen GAMING 5 introduces, the heatsink design has obviously changed as well, and as I mentioned earlier, the heatsinks are now designed to look like dragon claws instead of the dragon heads that were featured in first- and second-gen MSI GAMING heatsinks. MSI's now-familiar silver red dragon is found on both ends of these VRM heatsinks.


Between the two VRM coolers sits the VRM controller, a UPI Semiconductor product that controls the 8-phase VRM design. The DIMM VRM is a dual-phase part that is ready to provide all the power you need to push your DIMMs to the limit.


One of the most impressive things to me is that all of this is offered on a PCB that is just four layers thick, which a small box on the board's bottom edge shows by clearly laying the layers bare. The fabled M.2 SATA slot makes an appearance as well, although using it does disable a couple internal SATA ports.


On the board's bottom edge is a dual-digit POST display that displays error codes during the POST process, but it switches over to show CPU temperatures once POST is complete. The data to do so is provided by the Nuvoton NCT6792D Super I/O chip that is also responsible for this board's excellent fan controls and its onboard PS/2 port.


There are two points you can use to measure voltages on the Next-Gen MSI GAMING 5; one set is right by the board's socket and the other set is near the board's right edge. I do not recommend using the points near the socket unless you are an advanced user. They are not labeled, so using them without exactly knowing what you are doing could potentially cause some damage.


I located the onboard KIllerNic E2205 LAN controller under the left-most VRM cooler. The only other add-on controller I could find was the NXP TMDS unit that shifts the video signal from your installed CPU into HDMI formats.


That just leaves us with the audio, and I purposefully left that for last since there is quite a bit of engineering here that might not be immediately obvious.


Like past MSI GAMING products, the audio portion of the PCB is completely isolated from the rest of the board, and the line of isolation is highlighted by a bunch of red LEDs that light up when the board is powered on.


There is also the Audio Boost functionality that includes the plug shown above. Located on the board's bottom edge, it mates with the MOLEX cable I showed earlier. Actually enabling that power plug, however, requires a bit of electrical diversion, which the switch next to the audio section's capacitors, shown above, achieves. Flip the switch and rather than using power that is delivered via the 24-pin power plug, audio power is then sourced through the Audio Boost plug. This not only allows for more power to push high-end headphones and such, but also further isolates the electrical side of the MSI GAMING 5's audio circuit. I will have to do some testing to see if it really makes a difference, although I suspect its impact to be significant.