Box 'n bundle

Currently the final box art for the x38 Diamond hasn't been shipped to the MSI UK branch, so this sample was posted in a plain white box. However, MSI have a very small picture of what the box will look like on their website. It looks like this:

As you can see it seems like it will feature MSI's typical packaging layout with some sort of steel walkway being scratched by what seems to be the motherboard. It has got 4 claws, so could be Freddy Krueger. Definitely not Wolverine, he has three. That guy from Transformers told me.

With the board itself you receive a red, rounded IDE cable, a SATA to eSATA converter, 2 SATA to Molex connectors, an IEE1394 bracket, 6 SATA cables, backing plate, front panel headers, driver CDs and an X-Fi Xtreme Audio add in card.

Click to enlarge

X-FI Xtreme Audio

The X-Fi Extreme Audio is the cheapest of the X-Fi and misses out on a lot of the features of it's bigger and more expensive brothers. However, it's an X-Fi nonetheless so comes with the X-Fi control panel, giving you access to the Crystalizer and CMSS-3D surround upmixing. Unfortunately it only allows you to use EAX 4.0 as apposed to the latest 5.0 HD which will mean the latest games won't sound quite as real as the Extreme Gamer or the Fatal1ty edition.

One advantage of the Extreme Audio though, is the fact that it's PCI-e and can slot into anything from a 1x port to a 16x port. This makes it much easier to find a place for an add-on audio card in the ever dwindling world of PCI support. It's sound quality should also be superior to the onboard Realtek solution.