Conclusion
We want to like this board for its intended target market, the typical budget-conscious home user who probably won't do much tweaking. It certainly beats the miserably minimalist big-box offerings, with their insufficient ports and substandard components.
MSI identifies this board as "Military Class 4", which, along with a generous three-year guarantee, implies it will be reliable. Still, even some cheaper boards with similar port counts offer that same warranty period. So, while platform isn't a bad choice by any means, it's going to lose in the award category because more affordable competitors (see Eric Van der Linden's round-up) serve up comparable capabilities at a substantially lower price.
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Joe Trott is an Associate Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware, covering Motherboards.
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