A Closer Look

We need to look at the stuff I had to pull out of the MSI Nightblade MI2 before moving on. The initial item was the VGA tray with the system's main fan and the rigid PCIe extender, which will make fitting the GPU into what little space there is possible. The rigid PCB helps in keeping an installed GPU in position, while optimizing the GPU's slightly longer connection to the CPU itself.


Looking closely at the red centrifugal fan, it is of a brand I haven't heard of before. The ball-bearing design uses large, deep vanes to suck air in through either side of the shroud, before pushing it out through the heatsink's metal fins.


That heatsink is comprised of a metal hot plate that connects to a fin array via two large copper heatpipes. Combined with the fan pictured above and my test-bench's Intel i7-6700K, I rarely heard this constallation produce any noise at all, with just the occasional blast of air being shot out the back of the Nightblade MI2. It's really simple, but quite effective. Take the power-saving route with a 65W TDP CPU and you should end up with pretty decent temperatures indeed.


With those bits removed, I managed to poke my camera into the case for snap shots of the labels on both the included DVD drive and 350W power supply. The power supply is from FSP, a company that's been around forever. The DVD drive is Hitachi-LG made.


Poking around a bit more, I found that each SATA cable has a label on it, as well as being of a different color. This makes tracking down which cable has been attached to which device incredibly simple. I also noticed a Nuvoton Super I/O controller on the back of the motherboard, responsible for the PS/2 port, monitoring, and fan control.


The rear of the board is where the M.2 slot is situated, ready for 2280 drives only. One of the two SO-DIMM slots is also here.


Fortunately, there is a large opening for you to easily access the M.2 and SO-DIMM slots. The second DIMM slot, however, is a bit harder to reach because of its orientation and the CMOS battery MSI taped to it. I pulled the CMOS battery off and stuck it behind the bundle of close-by wires instead.


Searching the front of the board, I found an ASM1442K TMDS IC for the rear I/O panel's HDMI port and the Realtek ALC1150 audio CODEC, on front of the board and right by the PCIe slot.


There's an Intel Wi-Fi controller in the board's front mini-PCIe slot for those who can't reach a wired connection, and a custom 10-pin power plug has been placed in the corner opposite to it.


I located an NCP81203 3+2 VRM controller and 5 power phases on the board itself, right next to the CPU socket.