The MSI 770-C45 is a budget motherboard that uses an AMD 770 chipset to support a Socket AM3 CPU with a TDP up to 125W. That covers pretty much the entire range of AM3 CPUs as there are only a couple of models that require 140W.

As the CPU socket is AM3 this means that we're talking about a Phenom II or Athlon II CPU with an integrated DDR3 memory controller. The four slots on the motherboard support up to 16GB of DDR3 running at 13333MHz, unless you overclock in which case the maximum speed rises to 1600MHz.

The AMD 770 is a relatively basic chipset that supports a single PCI Express 2.0 x16 graphics slot without the option of CrossFireX with dual graphics cards. In a similar vein the SB710 Southbridge of the chipset lacks the SATA 3.0 support that recently appeared in the new SB850 Southbridge.

This sets the trend for the list of features which lean towards the legacy end of things and shy away from anything technically exciting that might appeal to the dedicated geek. There are two PS/2 ports, a Serial port, six USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet and six analogue mini jacks for the Realtek ALC888S audio. MSI has also included mid-board connectors for six more USB 2.0 ports to add to the six on the I/O panel. You'll note there is no sign of exotic stuff such as digital audio, eSATA or Firewire.

In addition to the PCI Express graphics slot there are two PCI Express x1 slots and three PCI slots as well as IDE and floppy connectors, so you get plenty of scope for upgrades and expansion.

The six SATA ports are arranged in line with the PCI slots and stick up vertically. This works perfectly well as the cables have plenty of room. By contrast the neighbouring IDE connector is in line with the graphics card slot and is laid down horizontally to guarantee the cable doesn't get in the way.

Plugging the MSI together for testing with a Phenom II X3 720 CPU, 4GB of Kingston KHX2133 DDR3 memory and a Radeon HD 5770 graphics card was a quick process. There's plenty of room around the components and it's easy to install the CPU cooler and power connections.

Once we had installed 64-bit Windows 7 we used MSI's Live Update 4 utility to download and install a BIOS update which ran within Windows and took a matter of moments. After a restart we used Live Update 4 to install the latest drivers for the hardware and then we were ready to run benchmark tests. The performance of the 770-C45 was perfectly decent and was just what we expected from this combination of CPU, chipset, memory and graphics.

The PC was excellent for gaming yet it was very quiet thanks to the presence of the passive coolers on the chipset. We felt no need to add any case fans and we were happy with the overall result.

Verdict
The MSI 770-C45 is a small ATX motherboard (305mm x 210mm) that delivers a basic set of features to support a socket AM3 CPU. The result - depending on your choice of components - is a PC with a combination of decent performance, average features and reasonable cost. This makes the 770-C45 worthy of consideration for your next PC build but it doesn't have any features that make it outstanding.

Company: MSI

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Tags: pci express universal serial bus gigabit ethernet central processing unit serial ata phenom ii pci express 2.0 hardware