MSI Big Bang-XPower II X79 Review – A World of Novelty Heatsinks

The cream of the MSI enthusiast range is the Big Bang series – in P55 we got the Trinergy and the Fuzion, for X58 we were treated to the XPower, in P67 there was the Marshal, and now with X79 MSI has graced us with the XPower II in the loosely defined XL-ATX form factor. Due to the increased size of the board (in length), the consumer is treated to seven PCIe slots, running at x16/x8/x8/x8 in full quad-GPU mode. This is also alongside some novelty heatsink design in the shape of a Gatling gun for the VRMs and rounds in an open magazine for the chipset. MSI even try and pull a sneaky one in the BIOS settings for better default performance depending on which BIOS you use. Read on for the full review!