The board
The P4N Diamond is another one of those boards that would look a whole lot better if it weren't dotted with so many multicolored slots and ports. Any aesthetic potential that the black board and silver heatsinks may have had is ultimately dashed by the mess of yellow, orange, green, and lavender ports and slots that populate the landscape. At least the P4N Diamond's manual refers to some of the ports by their color, so there's some utility to the ugliness.

Fortunately, the P4N Diamond's layout is better than its looks. Despite the wealth of integrated peripherals and on-board components, the board is devoid of any major clearance problems. Power plug placement definitely favors traditional ATX cases the mount the power supply above the motherboard, though. The P4N Diamond's primarily and auxiliary power connectors are both mounted near the top edge of the board, which might present problems for upside-down ATX cases that mount the PSU below the mobo.

While we're on the subject of power, note that the P4N Diamond also features a four-pin Molex connector to the left of the north bridge. The connector is there to provide a little extra juice to systems running a pair of graphics cards in SLI.

To the north of the, er, north bridge, the P4N Diamond has a decent amount of clearance around the CPU socket for larger heatsinks. Interestingly, unlike many high-end LGA775 motherboards, the P4N Diamond's voltage regulators aren't equipped with heatsinks. The north bridge chip is, and it also sports a fan. We're not too crazy about active north bridge cooling, largely because tiny north bridge fans tend to develop an annoying, high-pitched whine over time. We've seen at least one other nForce4 SLI Intel Edition board make do with only passive north bridge cooling, and it would be nice if the P4N Diamond could do the same.

Below the CPU socket, the P4N Diamond's array of expansion ports looks a little thin. Another PCI Express x1 or PCI slot would be welcome, but a couple of things conspire to make that impossible. First, with on-board PCI Express peripherals consuming a pair of PCI-E lanes, the chipset only has enough free lanes for a single x1 slot. Second, there simply isn't any room on the board for another expansion slot. We'd normally see a slot mounted between the PCI Express x16 slots, but MSI's paddle-less SLI switch monopolizes that part of the board.

MSI's P4N Diamond press kit makes a point of highlighting the board's digital SLI switch, and while it's certainly slicker than an SLI paddle switch that users have to physically flip, I'm not sure by how much. Flipping an SLI paddle takes all of a couple of seconds, and if a user already has the case open to install a second graphics card, it's really not a big deal.

Beyond the PCI Express x16 slots, we stumble upon the board's passive south bridge cooler and a tidy row of Serial ATA ports. Users with longer graphics cards need not worry about the south bridge cooler; it's a low-profile design that shouldn't get in the way. Longer graphics cards won't interfere with the board's DIMM slot tabs, either. Unlike with some boards, memory modules can be installed in and removed from the P4N Diamond with a graphics card installed.

Moving to the port cluster, the P4N Diamond offers a little bit of everything, including coaxial and TOS-Link digital S/PDIF audio outputs. While it's nice to have a choice between two flavors of S/PDIF output, it's a shame that MSI doesn't include a digital S/PDIF input, either alongside the dual digital outputs or at the expense of one of them.

In addition to what can be found in the port cluster, the P4N Diamond also comes bundled with a pair of PCI brackets that feature two more Firewire and USB ports. The board also has headers for an additional four USB ports.