Most motherboard manufacturers got their feet wet with ATI's CrossFire Xpress 3200 chipset on Socket 939, but MSI has jumped directly to Socket AM2 with the K9A Platinum. As the Platinum name might seem to imply, this board's definitely not purple. Instead, the K9A is adorned in a classy black finish that splurges on splashes of color for only a handful of onboard ports and slots.

Like ECS, MSI does a good job of placing the K9A Platinum's primary power connector on the right edge of the board.

The K9A's socket is typical of most Athlon 64 motherboards in that the DIMM slots are relatively close to the heatsink retention bracket. This, along with the proximity of the north bridge cooler and a quartet of tallish capacitors, can create clearance problems with ultra-wide CPU coolers. Fortunately, there's plenty of room for our favorite CPU cooler, the Zalman CNPS9500.

There's also room between the K9A Platinum's green and orange DIMM slot pairs. This gap should allow ambient airflow to keep memory modules a little cooler than if they were all sandwiched together, especially with four DIMMs installed.

Unlike the KA3 MVP, which relies on an active chipset fan to cool its voltage circuitry, the K9A Platinum's VRMs are capped with passive heatsinks. Passive cooling does require more ambient enclosure airflow, but we'd rather rely on larger, quieter, and more reliable case fans than tiny, whiny ones.

The K9A Platinum's slot stack avoids every problem we experienced on the KA3 MVP. First, there's two slots worth of clearance between the PCI Express x16 slots, giving plenty of space for air to flow between a pair of double-wide CrossFire cards. Double-wide CrossFire configs also leave users with one PCI Express x1 and one PCI slot, which is one slot better than the ECS board.

MSI's graphics card retention mechanism is also much easier to use. There's no lever or tab to hold cards in place. Instead, the PCI Express x16 slots narrow slightly, with small protrusions catching the hook at the back of the card. This holds things in place securely enough when coupled with a screw on the PCI bracket, and removing cards doesn't require elaborate finger contortions.

A low-profile south bridge cooler ensures that the K9A Platinum has plenty of clearance for longer graphics cards. MSI has also done a good job of arranging the board's Serial ATA ports so that none are compromised by longer double-wide designs. Ensuring adequate clearance around the Serial ATA ports seems like a no-brainer, but you'd be surprised—and dismayed—by how many motherboard manufacturers get it wrong.

Around the back, the K9A Platinum is fitted with a complete array of expansion ports, including serial and parallel plugs for the old-timers. The backplane also sports dual S/PDIF audio outputs, Firewire, and four USB ports. Headers for an additional six USB ports and the Firewire port are available, as well, but you don't get any fancy drive bay inserts in the box. In fact, you don't actually get anything in the way of unique extras.