MSI 848P Neo-LS: 800MHz FSB on a Budget

Company: MSI
Product: 848P Neo-LS
Street Price: $89 USD
Date Reviewed: October 13, 2003
Reviewed By: Joey Chao

MSI 848P Neo-LS Layout:

The way the components are laid out on the board is good. There is plenty of room around the socket to fit relatively large heatsinks. Notice that there are only two DIMM slots meaning that the board only supports up to 2GB of memory. The 20-pin ATX power connector is located to the top right edge of the board. This is the perfect placement for this connection because it keeps the power cable from interfering with other components such as the heatsink. The floppy connector is just below the 20-pin ATX connector and is the perfect place to where the cable can be easily inserted and removed. The IDE channels are just below the DIMM slots and are spaced so that they are also easily accessible.

The one complaint that we have about the board is the location of the AGP slot with respect to the DIMM slots. It is close enough to where users will be forced to remove the video card if they want to insert or take out memory. Our Radeon 9700 Pro only covered the first slot but longer cards such as the GeForce FX5900 Ultra or the Radeon 9800 Pro will cover both.

A  passive northbridge heatsink keeps the 848P chipset cool. This means that the system will run quieter as opposed to using an active solution (heatsink and fan). Another plus to using a passive solution is that there is no fan to worry about dying. We find that many overclockers like having active cooling solutions, but overall we do not find them totally necessary unless extremely high FSB's are obtained.

Here you can see a picture of MSI's CoreCell. This is what MSI's page states about CoreCell:

CoreCell is composed of 4 features:
 - Speedster(Maximum overclocking), PowerPro (powersaving), LifePro (constant temp control, smart FAN ) and BuzzFree (noise management)
 - It merges MSI features--FuzzyLogic and PC Alert
 - It provides user more advanced overclocking options by extending the Voltage selection, increasing the frequency adjustable range CPU/AGP/DDR/PCI
 - It monitors every temperature inside the system, control it according to system current loading and need
 - It allows user to clearly understand the system info from AP and BIOS

Fore more information about CoreCell follow this link.
 

The connections for the case such as power switch, hard drive LED, reset switch, and sound are all color coded and the plus positive pins are marked as well. We really like seeing this feature because it can be a hassle having to refer to the manual every time the cables need to be connected. The colors and the plus signs are clearly visible and impossible to get confused.