Packaging

Being an MSI Gaming product I wasn’t shocked at all when the Nightblade came in with its bright red and black theme. What I was surprised to see was an actual photo of the Nightblade right on the front. I love when you can see what you are getting without having to go online to find photos. Becides the photo on the cover you still get a large MSI G Series logo and the product name itself. There is also a Fnatic logo tucked up in the corner as well. Up on top there is a carrying handle and the “Just Game!”.

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Inside everything is protected with foam as well as a plastic bag around the case to prevent any scratches. All of the accessories come in a keyboard sized box tucked in up under everything else.

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Being a barebones system you are obviously going to get more accessories because we are getting accessories for both the motherboard and the case. Starting with all of the wires that came in the accessory box you get a power cord, a fan splitter, two SATA cables, and a cable to get you power and data to your disc drive. If you look closely you will see a few interesting things in the photo below. For one our power cable doesn’t have a standard north American power connection, this happens from times to time with review sampling because they send them out globally. You can expect the proper cord if you pick one up. MSI also went through the trouble to put nice red labels on each of the cords so you know what each of them is used for. They went as far as to label specific SATA cables for different bays in the case!

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MSI bagged up and labeled all of the other small items you will need for the Nightblade. You have hard drive slides and all of the screws individually bagged. You get two antennas for the built in wireless as well. They even went as far as to include the small connection covers that the motherboard would normally come with installed.

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Should you need another 2.5 inch drive bay on top of what you already get they included a 3.5 to 2.5 inch adapter as well.

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For documentation, you get a whole book. You get a user guide for the barebone and a fold out user guide as well. There is a general Intel 9 Series overclocking guide and also a small info paper on the MSI Gaming Series of products. Then of course, you also get a driver and software disc for when you have everything put together.

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MSI is expecting to see the Nightblade hitting a few LANs from time to time. To help with that they designed it to be carried with it’s built in handle. To make that even easier they include a neoprene handle cover that you can install. The cover uses Velcro to attach around the handle. In addition, if it wasn’t obvious what it was they even labeled the bag! 

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While the Nightblade actually supports a full-length video card, when prepping for the build I decided to use the Mini-TIX Gaming R9 270X that MSI had sent over as well. So while we are looking at packaging let’s take a look at what the video card comes/with. The box itself has the same black and red theme that all MSI gaming products have. The size of the box is MUCH smaller than any of their full sized cards. Even so they were still able to fil the model information on the cover alongside the silver MSI gaming dragon logo. On the back there is a small photo of the actual card alongside information about the cooling design. There is also information about the gaming app for quick overclocking and MSIs Military Class components. There is also a feature and specification listing. The specifications aren’t very big, but it’s nice that they included something at all.

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Inside the box, the card is wrapped up in a static bag then protected with foam on all sides. There is a small box for accessories on the side and the user guide and driver disc is sitting on top of the card. For accessories, you get a DVI to VGA adapter, a mini DisplayPort to full sized DisplayPort adapter, and a six pin power to 8 pin power adapter. I love that the power adapter is also all red and black, there is nothing worse looking in a build than the bright multi colored adapters that come with most video cards. Sure you really shouldn’t need to use them if you have a good power supply, but if for some reason you need one it’s nice to have it included.

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #35710 24 Sep 2014 16:16
Want a LAN rig but don't know where to even start? MSI has made building a LAN rig much easier with their Nightblade barebones

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