14 DAY TRIAL // Judging by the six Intel P45-based motherboards in MSI's product lineup, one could easily say, and not be in the wrong when doing so, that the Taiwanese manufacturer is really fond of Intel's chipset. So much so that it has decided to roll out a new mobo, based on the same P45 chipset mentioned above. However, this time around, the company has settled on going with a more interesting board design, offering users no less than 8 memory DIMMs.
Currently, most motherboards are built with two or a maximum of four memory DIMMs, supporting the ol' (therefore traditional) DDR2 memory standard. MSI is one of those manufacturers that can provide users with a choice for a 6-memory-DIMM motherboard, based on Intel's X48 chipset. However, unlike the X58 motherboard we told you about earlier today, this P45-powered mobo can support either DDR2 or DDR3 memory modules, with four memory DIMMs each, out of the total of eight.
Given the high number of DIMMs, the "Memory Lover" dubbing appears to be more than well deserved. The board's model name is P45-8D, and it sports four DDR2-800MHz memory slots that can support a maximum of 16GB of RAM. The remaining four are DDR3-1600 and can take up to 8GB of memory, in dual-channel configurations.
Aside from the high number of memory slots, the mobo appears to be an excellent choice for a small home server system, given that it sports only a single PCIe X16 graphics slot and an impressive number of 8 SATA 3.0 Gbps ports. The back panel features six audio jacks, for the built-on 7.1 channel audio, one Gigabit Ethernet port, and four USB 2.0 ports.
As with any other product that has not been officially released yet, details on the availability and pricing for the P45-8D have not been made available so far. Nevertheless, should we take into account the fact that leaked images of the mobo are already out there, it will probably make its way onto various retailers' shelves soon.