The release version of the upcoming enthusiast-grade motherboard by MSI, based on the Intel X58 chipset for the upcoming Core i7 series processors, has been pictured at Coolaler. The close-up snaps show the motherboard to be packing quite some booty. It also shows that MSI hasn't used exorbitant cooling for the motherboard. There are two independent cooling units for the chipset and VRM areas. The board sports Dr-MOS component protection, and MSI seems to have spread the MOSFETs evenly, not to congest them at one place. The board provides a diagnostic display feature called D-LED 2, a small LED screen that shows diagnostic information, similar to the LCD poster that ASUS packs with some of its motherboards.

The board features an extensive set of expandability options. It features three PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots that support both ATI CrossfireX and NVIDIA 3-way SLI for multi-GPU operations. It uses overclocker-friendly features on-board, including the peculiar turbo button. There are also 10 SATA ports, four of which, route to an external controller. All in all, the board looks promising. It isn't the highest MSI would be offering for the X58 plaform, with an even higher motherboard planned. For more pictures, browse through the thread.