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If you’re building a budget PC, you’re still better off buying an AM2+ board and an inexpensive Phenom II processor. If you’re looking for something more powerful, though, you need Intel’s excellent Core i5-750 chip and a P55 Express board such as MSI’s P55M-GD45. This is MSI’s cheapest P55 Express board. It has a microATX form factor, so you can squeeze it into a smaller case than Biostar’s ATX-format TP55. It looks smarter, too, thanks to its unified blue-and-black colour scheme. Like most P55-based boards, it has two full-length PCI Express slots, so you can fit two graphics cards in a CrossFire configuration. The first is a standard x16 slot, while the second support speeds of up to x4. Despite this, you won’t see any significant performance bottleneck, even with twin Radeon HD 5870s fitted. The second large slot can also be used for other PCI Express devices such as TV tuners, plus there’s a PCI Express x1 slot and a PCI slot as well. There are four dual-channel memory slots for DDR3 modules, supporting speeds up to 2,133MHz. Just 2GB of such memory will cost you a whopping £211 including VAT. Thankfully, 1,333MHz memory is a more reasonable £36. We tested the board with our usual 4GB of 1,333MHz DDR3 and its results were the same as every other P55 Express board we’ve seen. With IDE and floppy connectors, six SATA ports and a RAID controller, there are ample internal storage options. There’s also a pair of eSATA ports, a six-pin FireWire port and 10 USB ports. Six audio jacks support 7.1 surround-sound speaker systems.
P55 boards still look expensive compared to their AM2+ counterparts. However, if you want to build a powerful Core-i5 based PC, this board is a great choice, with plenty of features at a relatively low price.
