MSI is working on micro-atx motherboard with X58 chipset

MSI is developing a micro-atx motherboard based on the X58 chipset for Core i7 CPUs. Despite its small size, the Socket 1366 board gets full-fledged X58 features such as six DDR3 memory slots and two x16 PCI-e slots.

The motherboard is still codenamed MS-7593 for the time being, but probably brings MSI marketed the model under the name X58M. In addition to the two x16-pci-e slots, the micro-atx board has an x4-pci-e slot and a PCI slot. In addition, there are six USB 2.0 ports, an esata connector, a firewire interface, two PS/2 ports and 7.1-channel audio. There are also four headers for another eight USB 2.0 ports, in addition to seven SATA connectors, an IDE port and a header for a second firewire port.

It is not yet known when the X58M will be released on the market and the price is also a guess. MSI has also chosen not to equip the board with a heatpipe construction, presumably to keep the price down. Incidentally, MSI is not the first company to launch a micro-atx-X58 board: Asus and DFI already preceded the Taiwanese company with the Rampage II Gene mATX X58 and the Lanparty Jr X58-T3H6, respectively.