MSI P35 Neo versus MSI P35 Neo Combo
It is easy to see that the boards are of similar PCB design.
The differences are only in the areas of memory slots. In particular,
MSI P35 Neo Combo offers four multi-colored slots, two of which are
aimed at DDR2 modules, and two - for DDR3.
On MSI P35 Neo, there are also four slots but they are all
aimed at DDR2 slots.
On each board, there are three connectors to plug in fans: one
4-pin connector (for the CPU cooler) and two 3-pin. The latter are not
used - the system of cooling the chipset is fully passive and is made
up of two radiators.
The boards use one PCI Express x16, two PCI, and three PCI
Express x1 slots.
Both the motherboards use the ICH9 south bridge with a
radiator. Therefore, the board supports support four SerialATA II links
each.
Besides, the boards use the additional ParallelATA/SerialATA
controller Marvell 88SE6111.
In the end, as many as 7 hard disks (5 SATA II + 2 PATA) can
be plugged in to each motherboard. Then - the south bridge ICH9
supports 12 USB2.0 ports: four on the rear panel, with four more
plugged in with plates (missing in the bundle). Besides, both boards
support the Firewire. For that, there is an additional VT6308P
controller made by VIA.
Therefore, each motherboard supports two ports one of which
installed on the rear panel, with the other plugged in with a bracket
(missing in the package bundle).
Also, both the motherboards use the audio codec ALC888.
A few words on the network support: both the motherboards
support high-speed network connection; they use the same RTL8111B
controller:
The boards' rear panels are of the following configuration:
Now on to the BIOS settings.
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MoBo:
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VGA Card:
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CPU & Memory:
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