Verdict: Decent on-board sound but otherwise uninspiring

The Diamond family is MSI's series of high-end boards, which feature integrated Sound Blaster audio instead of AC97 or Intel HD Audio, as seen on most other motherboards.

In the case of the P4N Diamond, this takes the form of the Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit chip. The main advantage of this over HD Audio is support for EAX Advanced HD in games, although it still isn't a patch on a Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music. Unfortunately, while both chips of the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition chipset are passively cooled, the two 8x PCI-E slots sit next to each other, which will make fitting third-party graphics card coolers very difficult. The rest of the PCB layout is very good, with no major components interfering with each other.

Six RAID-capable S-ATA II ports are provided, along with a pair of RAID-capable EIDE channels, ten USB 2 and three FireWire ports. Unlike the other two nForce4 SLI Intel Edition motherboards, the P4N Diamond has two Gigabit LAN ports, so it's better equipped for a network junkie. There are also two PCI slots and a single 1x PCI-E slot.

By whacking up the chipset voltage to a healthy 1.7V, we were able to raise the FSB of the P4N Diamond to 225MHz. This overclocked the CPU from 3GHz to 3.38GHz, which is noticeably higher than the Abit and Gigabyte nForce4 SLI Intel Edition motherboards. A 225MHz FSB still isn't anything to get excited about, though, as the Asus and Gigabyte 975X-based motherboards both ran stably with a 255MHz FSB.

The P4N Diamond is considerably more expensive than the other two nForce4 SLI Intel Edition motherboards reviewed this month, due to its higher-quality on-board audio. However, the Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit isn't really cutting-edge technology, so a better option would be to buy the Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI and a Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music, which would cost just £20 more than the P4N Diamond by itself.

• Cases - 21st November 2008
• Motherboards - 24th October 2008
• Gaming Headsets - 26th September 2008
• Dream PCs - 24th September 2008
• Headphones - 12th September 2008
• Media PC components - 22nd August 2008
• PSUs - 14th July 2008

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