The next accessory bundled with MSI Eclipse Plus that we haven’t mentioned yet is D-LED2 indicator panel:

It is plugged into a special connector a little below the South Bridge heatsink and displays POST status during system boot-up. Once the operating system is loaded, you can see an MSI logo on the screen and then the panel shuts down for power-saving reasons. D-LED2 button on the mainboard PCB will let you turn it back on and switch cyclically between most important readings. The screen may display the current base clock, processor and chipset North Bridge voltages, or temperature of a random location taken with a thermal diode on a long cable also included among the mainboard accessories.

Actually, the lower right corner of the MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard PCB is worth taking a real close look at. The next photo shows a small black connector for the D-LED2 panel and a number of buttons.

From right to left we see Power On, Reset and D-LED2 button used to switch between the D-Led2 readings. The next button called Green Power allows enabling and disabling MSI APS (Active Phase Switching) power-saving technologies. MSI introduced their own implementation of dynamic switching between active voltage regulator phases a little later than Asus or Gigabyte, however, they did it excellently. Right from the start you could enable or disable power-saving right in the BIOS without any specific utilities, which had already been a great advantage over the competitors’ implementations. Now things got even simpler: all you need to do is press the button. Although, you may also use special Green Power Center utility, if you like.

The last button enables a very interesting function called OC Dial. The rotating knob right next to it allows increasing the base frequency with the increment set in the BIOS, i.e. you overclock the system by raising all other frequencies connected to the base one. As we know, many overclocking fans use special overclocking utilities, however, they are far from perfect and MSI Overclocking Center is no exception. OC Dial function does work fine and doesn’t depend on the operating system.

All buttons are marked, highlighted during work, so you can hardly confuse them, although you can easily miss the one you need. They are located too close to one another that is why I was always very cautious when switching between the D-LED2 readings using the corresponding button, fearing that I would accidentally hit the Reset one.

You may have already noticed that there are no outdated FDD and PATA connectors on MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard and there are additional Serial ATA controllers instead. Intel ICH10R South Bridge provides support for six SATA ports. Using a PCI Express lane JMicron JMB362 controller adds another two ports, each is then split into two more with the help of two JMicron JMB322 controllers. One of the advantages of this particular implementation is that the devices connected to these additional SATA ports do not require any special drivers to be installed. Another JMicron controller adds two more ports in the form of eSATA.

Besides a pair of eSATA connectors on the back panel, there are also PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectors, CMOS Clear button, eight USB ports, IEEE1394 port implemented by VIA VT6308P controller, Gigabit network connector provided by two Realtek RTL8111C controllers and a traditional POST indicator in addition to the D-LED2 panel. All audio connectors are placed onto a separate card with PCI Express x1 interface – Creative X-Fi Xtreme (MS-4132) based on Creative CA0110-IBG chip.

The components layout from the mainboard manual indicates that there are six fan connectors. The interesting thing is that despite the missing FDD and PATA connectors, there is a COM pin-connector, although you will have to get a corresponding bracket yourselves.

Numerous LEDs indicate the number of active phases in the voltage regulator circuitry and provide other status updates.

I pointed out in one of my recent reviews that although most mainboard manufacturers really like to equip their products with a lot of LEDs, they for some reason forget about HDD activity indicators. MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard does have HDD LED, but they did even more than that. There are separate indicators for drives connected to the chipset South Bridge, additional Serial ATA and eSATA controllers, so you will not only be aware that the system is accessing the hard drives at a given moment of time, but you will even know which controllers are being requested. The important thing is that all the LED’s can be disabled in the mainboard BIOS.

Overall, MSI Eclipse Plus mainboard looks very good, if we do not regard the additional Nvidia NF200 controller and separate cooling systems as drawbacks. I also doubt that anyone would consider missing FDD and PATA ports a drawback as well. These interfaces lose their acuteness day by day, you just have to keep it in mind. Buttons are a definite advantage, but the fact that they are placed so close to one another poses a problem. Another great feature is a discrete sound card based on Creative technology. We are rather neutral when it comes to GreenPower Genie and D-LED2 indicator panel: it is good to have them, but it’s OK if we don’t. The LED indication system is very well thought-through and illustrative. If you are annoyed by the super bright LEDs, you can easily turn them off, which is an indisputable advantage.