MSI Big Bang XPOWER Intel X58 motherboard review

Overclocking is often seen as a dark art and MSI have attempted to take some of the effort out of this by the inclusion of an OC Genie button on the motherboard.

Simply shut down the system, hit the button and it will light up in blue and work its magic. The chip will then automatically try and set the optimal overclock in a matter of a few seconds.

By doing this our system was overclocked to 4ghz, almost a 1.4ghz overclock without any effort ! We managed to improve upon this by raising the voltage to 1.425 and then our Core i7 920 was stable at 4.2ghz. To be honest, for most people that OC Genie button is going to be a lifesaver as we couldn't believe how well it actually worked, giving a rock solid overclocked system with minimal effort and huge gains in performance also. We would recommend you use a good cooler for this however, not the reference Intel solution.

We believe that the Big Bang product will not only be a great overclocking board for the experienced enthusiast, but that it will help inexperienced users to get to grips with overclocking. Studying the bios changes and settings required to get the most from the system. They even supply an overclocking guide in the box which gives a lot of basic pointers.

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