There are four blue PCI Express x16 slots. The three leftmost slots have 16 lanes of PCI Express 2.0 bandwidth, while the rightmost slot has four lanes of PCI Express 2.0 bandwidth. The two black slots are x1 PCI Express 1.0 slots, and the longer black slot is a legacy PCI slot.

The large heatsink that bares the MSI Eclipse Plus badge covers both the NVIDIA nForce 200 chipset and the ICH10R southbridge. The Intel ICH10R chipset powers the six black SATA II ports ar the edge of the motherboard, which can be operated in RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 modes. The blue SATA II ports are controlled by a pair of JMicron controllers, and can be operated in RAID 0, 1 and JBOD modes.

There are six DDR3 slots on the MSI Eclipse Plus motherboard, with a maximum capacity of 24GB. Supported RAM speeds are 800/1066/1333MHz. Memory should be run at no more than 1.65v in order to avoid damaging the Core i7 CPU.

Intel X58 motherboards use a LGA 1366 socket, which means it's only compatible with Core i7 CPUs. Socket 1366 is incompatible with Socket 775 coolers, so older after market HSFs won't fit.

The MSI Eclipse has an on-board CMOS reset button that can reset all BIOS options to defaults. The blue eSATAII ports on the motherboard are controlled by a JMicron JMB362 controller, and can be run in RAID 0, 1 and JBOD modes.

The MSI D-LED can display system boot information, as well as monitor system temperatures when using the included thermal sensor. The MSI Eclipse Plus has a number of on-board controls. From left to right: the overclocking dial can dynamically alter the base CPU clock. The OC Dial button to the right toggles the OC dial on and off. The Green Power button toggles the system between automatic power savings modes. The D-LED2 button controls the function of the MSI D-LED display (above). The reset and power buttons do exactly what you expect.