13 Barebones Reviewed Are Anything But Square

PC Alert 4: Monitoring of the temperature and fan speed

MSI MEGA Barebones: Two unequal brothers, continued

Another piece of software that MSI includes with the Mega barebones is a special version of PC Alert 4. This tool monitors the temperature of the MEGA and the rotation of the system fan and CPU fan. Unfortunately, you can't influence the behavior of the temperature-controlled fans. To ensure that the software doesn't continuously block the monitor, PC Alert 4 transmits the data to the front display. Every four seconds, the display changes and shows the temperature states and the speeds of the fans. The font in the display is a matter of taste, just like in radio or music player mode, because the font is slightly in italics. Only the PC Alert 4 software can switch the display between Celsius and Fahrenheit.

System information in the display: The display changes every four seconds.

As an option, the MEGA barebones from MSI can also be upgraded with a TV tuner card. Due to the low construction height of the MEGA PCs, this card is kept particularly low. The board is put in the empty PCI slot, but it is difficult to reach if a graphics card is installed.

Suitable for MSI Mega: A TV tuner card with a recording function in MPEG format

Noise alert: loud CPU fan