HiFi Features

Operating the HiFi features is a piece of cake. For those who are couch impaired, MSI includes a nice remote where you can control most aspects of the MEGA 651 in HiFi mode. A mouse replacement it is not. There is no touch pad similar to the ATI Remote Wonder, let alone any software to allow mouse control.

For those of you who don't mind getting up now and then, the MEGA 651's HiFi operations are clearly labelled on the front of the case. To turn it on, press on the HiFi button. This will power the HiFi portion, but not the PC itself. You have a button for playback mode, and an eject button for the CD.

Just beneath, much like an audio device, you have your options to skip, go back and pause tracks. You also have a nice sized volume knob as well, that isn't so big that it detracts from the case design. Next to it, you have front backlit LCD. When you pop in a music or MP3 CD, the lights got to work and display track and time information, as well as some funky bars that dance to the music. Note that your PC does not need power to do this, but just the HiFi portion. This means that even if you install an add-on sound card, and disable the onboard sound, the HiFi will still work.

As we've already mentioned, music and MP3s play with the MEGA 651's HiFi component, but DVDs do not. Granted, with a TV-Out video card, you need power to the PCI slots, so it makes sense for the PC needing to be on.

Speaking of power, one item that is a bit of concern is the CD drive is constantly powered. This is the case whether or not the HiFi or the PC itself is powered off. This means that the PSU is powered on, and therefore the unit is constantly generating a bit of heat. It doesn't get hot, but it is warm to the touch. Because the MEGA 651 does not have a power switch to the PSU, you will have to pull out the power cable if you don't plan on using the computer for a while.

Another power issue I have is that the HiFi portion will only work with the PC turned off. This poses a problem if you've become attached to the nice backlit display, because this display only works when the PC is powered off (!). With the PC powered on, it merely displays the time. Something useful, like displaying music info or system temperatures would have been nice. You have full functionality of the CD player, and the radio (with MSI's radio software) with the PC on, but the display won't be nearly as interesting.

Cooling & PSU

MSI stuck with traditional air-cooling for the MEGA 651. You won't find anything fancy like heat-pipes here, but they did do a slight variation anyways.

As you can see, the heatsink used is a regular aluminum heatsink. Cooling it works a little differently where you setup the fan on the side to blow air through the heatsink. MSI pre-applies some thermal paste for you. I don't have any specs, but I can tell you it's paste, and not a TIM sticker. Performance seems to be on par with other thermal compounds we've used.

Installation is straightforward (no tools needed), albeit a little tricky. The MEGA 651 is very tight inside, and I found the toughest thing to install was the heatsink for the CPU. I still got it done in under a minute, but word of advice, install the heatsink's fan after installing the heatsink, or you won't be able to see the heatsink's clips catch the socket's notches.

So the heatsink looks interesting, but how does it performs? Well, since we don't have any other cooler that will fit, we'll be comparing numbers with the Intel stock aluminum cooler on the ABIT IC7. Temperatures are done with the cases closed (IC7 was in a Lian-Li PC65U). What we are going to learn from this test is the performance of the MSI cooler in its environment, compared to a standard tower with stock cooling.

Temperatures aren't anything spectacular. In fact, they are terrible in my opinion, but it is within spec of the Pentium 4, and I didn't experience any instability or clock throttling. The above temperatures were without any addon cards though..., when I dropped in our All-In-Wonder 9700 Pro, temperatures spiked up to 63°C while running our UT2003 benchmarks. Ouch.

There are a few reasons why cooling performance isn't that good. One problem is the MEGA 651 is pretty tight inside. This poses a problem because there is nowhere to accommodate a case fan.

Another issue is installing addon cards will block the CPU heatsink's ability to draw cooler outside air. As there is no case fan, the heatsink needs to draw air through a perforated opening on the side of the case. Above is the heatsink installed. Air is drawn into the fan, and blown out the other side. The problem comes up when you want to install an addon card...

As you can see, with a PCI and/or AGP card installed, you end up blocking the fan. Now, air still does circulate, but the airflow is noticably reduced when an addon card is installed. Eitherway, just to confirm, I removed the AIW 9700 Pro, and retested the MEGA 651 temperatures without a card. As I expected, temperatures dropped by about 3°C.

The only fan you'll find, other than the CPU HSF, is the power supply fan. The PSU is a mere 200W, but considering you'll likely only have a CPU, memory, hard drive and a couple cards at most, it should be sufficient. With our complement of a 2.4 P4, 512MB of Corsair TWINX, an 80GB 7200 RPM HDD, 16x DVD, and an AiW 9700 Pro, the system performed admirably, without any crashes or PSU issues.

Noise

Given the amount of fans, you will probably guess the MEGA 651 is quiet, and in guessing so, you are correct. The fans are speed controlled, and only spin at full throttle when the CPU is under 100% load. Even at full speed, noise levels are tolerable. If you're gaming, this probably won't bother you, and mundane tasks like web surfing, or email will be near silent. In fact, on some of the cooler days here, the fan actually stopped spinning when the PC was idle.

Installation and Potential Issue

As you may guess, there isn't much room to work with inside. It would be a good idea to disassemble the drive cages before proceeding.

The hard drive installs into one of the cages beneath the optical drive. It installs in an upside down manner, but it shouldn't cause any problems.

The optical drive is a snap to install. For all the devices, MSI has included more than enough screws for everything.

Though I had no problems installing an ATI AiW 9700 Pro and AiW VE, I did have major issues with the MSI FX5900-VTD128. The card just didn't want to fit. The problem I ran into was one of the screws on the IO panel of the video card was keeping the FX5900 from properly seating. Another issue was the second HSF on the video card's back was pushing up against the PSU wiring, putting pressure on the card. I eventually got it to fit, but I'm a little wary in saying all video cards will work fine. It's best to ask around beforehand if your card will fit in the MEGA 651.

The Motherboard

The motherboard used in the MSI MEGA 651 is the MSI MS-6760 v1.0. It's a SiS based motherboard (SiS651+SiS962) that supports AGP8x, DDR333, and AC'97 sound.

There are two memory slots, supporting up to 2GB of ram. The chipset supports PC2700, though faster modules may work (though only at DDR333). Be aware that MSI officially lists only Kingston brands as compatible, so be wary if you got some generic stuff. We ran some Corsair TWINX PC3200 without any issues.

Being such a compact board, you're not going to find any onboard RAID, though you can easily install an add-on card in the PCI slot for that. There are just two IDE connections, and one floppy connection.

The SiS962 Southbridge is responsible for the lower level functions of the board. USB2.0 support is present, and it is backwards compatible with USB1.1 devices.

Realtek makes its presence here with a couple of its chips. Networking is supported by the Realtek RTL8101L, with supports 10/100 Ethernet. The second Realtek part is the ever popular Realtek ALC 650. We've covered this part in other motherboard reviews, and have always been quite pleased with it. It supports 5.1 sound, and unless you're a true audiophile, I'm sure it'll suit your needs perfectly.

In the event you ever have to reset your CMOS, the battery and jumper are in a rather convenient location at the edge of the motherboard.

The BIOS and Overclocking

Fairly vanilla BIOS here. Other than the usual suspects, there isn't much in the way of tweaking for enthusiasts.

The only real changes you can make that would affect performance are the enabling and disabling of various integrated devices, and some very minor memory adjustments.

As for overclocking& this is something you can just forget about. Unless you got an engineering sample Pentium 4, your multiplier options are naturally missing, but there are also no options for FSB. Well, actually if you have a Northwood "A", which is a 100FSB (400MHz quad pumped) chip, you can perhaps boost it to 133, but that's it. 100 or 133FSB are your only two options. Given the tight confines of the MEGA 651, this is probably a good thing as heat will be an issue if you're serious about overclocking.