Integrated Hardware

Click to enlarge

The Memory Controller Hub (MCH) employs a nice silver active cooling solution. Unfortunently, it only uses two retention hooks, so if you're planning to use an aftermarket cooler, such as the , it won't install properly without some modification.

The MCH is a flipchip design, much as the Pentium 3s of yesteryear, and is the traffic cop for the higher level I/O requests. The I/O Controller Hub (ICH4) doesn't need any cooling, and is responsible for things such as ATA, LAN, and AC97 sound. USB2.0 is also a feature, fully integrated into the ICH4, and negates the need for an add on controller that MSI used in the past. Despite the new features, ATA100 support is all that is offered with this chipset.

To address the lack of ATA133 support in the ICH4, the Max2 - BLR does include the Promise 20276 hard disk controller. Other than offering either RAID 0 or RAID 1 mode support, you can also configure it to run your hard drives independently. As with previous Promise controllers, expect 10-15 seconds added to your boot time.

Despite supporting AC'97, like the KT3 Ultra-ARU, this board uses the Realtek ALC650 sound chip. It is AC'97 2.2 compatible, and supports 5.1 sound configuration. It's comparible to most mid level soundcards, and can easily be used in place of a dedicated sound card. It does eat away at your CPU, but considering that the slowest 533FSB Pentium 4 is 2.26GHz, I really doubt it'll make a difference.

MSI includes a boatload of connections with this board. Although everything you expect is there, the 10/100 LAN connection is probably something a lot of you aren't used to seeing on an enthusiast motherboard.

Click to enlarge

If you want to make use of the 6-Channel sound, you'll need to install the D-Bracket for it. The ICH4 supports up to 6 USB connections, and other than the two USB ports built-in, you have two additional adapters, giving you the 6 total. If you use the Bluetooth features though, you will have to sacrifice one USB connection.

Something that bothered me was the lack of 3-Pin fan headers. There are a total of 3 headers, and only two are usable since the MCH fan uses one. Four headers would have been perfect, but alas, we can't have it all.

Previous Page - The Board

Next Page - The BIOS & Software