Socket 775 Micro-ATX MSI motherboards review

Page 6 - Overclock, power consumption

We've be rather interested in how would the two small motherboards perform overclock wise too. We all know or at leas have heard of the capabilities of the new Intel processors, now is a good time to check if they can be effectively used with these motherboards. This is what we managed to do with P6NGM:

We did ran into some difficulties with P6NGM, the multiplier settings of the processor to be precise. Setting a multiplier lower than the default didn't work and the processor was unstable with the box cooler when running above 3300MHz. So the maximum we had for the bus (with ease though) was 300 (300x11), but the motherboard does have bigger potential - new BIOS is expected soon and MSI assured us each and every option will perform flawlessly. Still bear in mind that we did not change the processor voltage - i.e. everything we did was on default.

Unfortunately we can't say kind words for 945GCM7 V2 – at even the slightly raised system bus, Windows didn't load. Still 945 is an aging chipset and him keeping paste with his more recent brethren is too much to expect anyway.

Now a look at the power consumption of the both micro ATX based systems:

As you can see even when overclocked P6NGM is doing better, needing less juice. So a miniature low watt PSU would be enough for a moderately potent system (still depending on what video card you use though).