welcome to my unboxing and first look at the z7 z77a gd65 this is MSI's first
board that I've had a look at on the brand new z77 platform from Intel so
this is using a new chipset supporting Intel third generation core i5 and core
i7 processors on LGA 1155 so yes $22 Nom
CPU ready it is also SLI ready and Crossfire ready compatible with Windows
7 it better be and supports Intel Core Series processors which it had better
all right PCI Express Generation 3 is also supported it should be noted of
course of course yeah MSI brought this up that they were the first with a PCI
Express Generation 3 ready motherboard and that was on the z68 platform as well
as virtu MVP so a little bit more on that in a moment it comes with a
three-year warranty in USA Canada and Mexico includes their 1 second
overclocking OC Gen 2 OC geni now overclocks more than just the CPU which
is a very cool thing as well as click BIOS 2 which is their graphical ufi BIOS
click BIOS 2 is 10 times better than click BIOS 1 and I would say the best
UEFI implementation that I have used so far I love click BIOS 2 it's very easy
to navigate uh we're going to switch spots here change
places all right OC Genie over clock in
1 second it probably takes less than a second actually and provides an instant
performance boost to CPU memory and integrated
graphics and apparently storage device performance cool at least 36% boost in
3D gaming performance that's probably assuming you're using the onboard GPU
all right military class 3 so they are using their uh they're using their Dr
Moss 2 so this is their next Generation their Dr
Moss concept was originally introduced used on their p-55 boards and was one of
the things that drove MSI p55 boards at least herodan C where I work to be one
of the most popular ones out there so this is a next generation of that proven
technology we've also got high SE caps super farite chokes as well as solid
caps built into this board let's go ahead and open it up ah yes okay
supercharger is awesome because you can charge your iPad iPhone SL mobile at
highp speed even when your PC is shut down so that is even when your CPU is in
the lowest possible resting state which is powered Dam certificate of quality
and stability okay sure um you guys won't need this that's
for me uh drive that won't be in the retail box drivers and utilities DVD
download the latest off of the MSI website quick installation guide oh this
looks really big actually look at that they show you all the different components with little diagrams and
stuff handy next software and
application exclusive userfriendly feature collection okay oops so shows
you how to use their various software applications
o teaming Genie provides traffic load balancing and redundant Nick operation
if network connection fails
cool aha we have oh neat even on a gd65
level board we've got uh the little cables for measuring the voltage
directly off the board as opposed to through the BIOS that's very cool all
right next we've got four SATA 3 6 GB per second right angle cables and yes
based on my testing it doesn't matter that they're SATA 3 but that's what they are so I'm going to call them what they
are we've also got an IO Shield aha
flexible black SLI Bridge my very favorite
kind the user's guide lots of
accessories here guys we've also got their M connectors which allow you to
more easily connect your front panel connectors including USB 2 as well as
your you know power switch reset switch and all that good stuff and finally the
board itself I'm really looking forward to checking out this
board because MSI in the last few Generations has done such a good job on
the Aesthetics and as you guys know if you watched my video where are you
standing really close to me for a reason
I no no I don't want the shadow so sorry about that guys there's a bit of a
miscommunication where you know I was uncomfortable cuz slick was standing too
close but he deemed it necessary so uh you know I got over it anyway here we go
so we've got our LGA 1155 processor as
well as all of our built-in military class pwm here you can see their
military class 3 branding and this is this is okay so yes the gun thing is a
little bit played out but the good news is that on the MSI board you can kind of
ignore it you know if you're looking at it from a normal angle which would be above it a little bit and at least it's
Tastefully implemented guys that's all I'm saying here so we've got blue and
black anodized with silver accents heat sinks I am definitely big into the
Aesthetics of my motherboards because they make a difference to how your entire system looks and these ones look
really really sharp all right we've got our 8 Pin CPU power connector in its
ideal location up at the top left we have support for dual Channel DDR3
memory this is uh in line with the CPU remember this supports either IV Bridge
CPUs or last generation sandybridge processors so you can install any lg1155
processor that you want in this motherboard you're just going to get the
best performance out of a new Ivy Bridge chip up here we've got some
LEDs we've got our OC Genie button which I've featured in the past although we
haven't tried ococ gen2 so I'm looking forward to trying that also our power
and reset buttons V checkpoints for a wide variety of different motherboard
components including the onboard graphics on the CPU which to my
understanding can be overclocked especially since OC gen does it her her
to my understanding uh our 24 pin connector is at its ideal location along
the right hand edge of the board we also have a front USB 3 header here so this
is running off of the Intel USB 3 so there are four Intel usb3 ports that are
running directly off of the Intel chipset here we have the Intel SATA 36
GB per second ports which are going to be the highest performance one we've got
Intel SATA 2 3 GB per second ports as well as thirdparty SATA 3 6 gbit per
second ports here is a little post meter so you can diagnose easily any posting
issues as well as their super just a sec sorry guys here's the
supercharger red coded which means you can charge things faster off of this
port here's a regular USB two header as well as another one here's our multibio
switch so it has dual BIOS integrated on the board and you can easily switch
between them so this is helpful if you have a dialed in overclock you really
don't want to screw it up and then you want to try something else you can also
flash different revisions of the BIOS so that you can find out is the new BIOS
you know perfect for my needs or is it not and if you don't like it you can go
back to the old one just like that very cool world's first PCI Express gen 3 we
can take that sticker off there we are and moving along we've got trusted
platform module we've got some Led guys aha there's our front panel connectors
as well as our front audio so I was looking for those guys next we have the
slot layout so we have no Legacy PCI on
this board 1 2 3 PCI e16 although I'll get into why they're not quite PCI e16
in just a moment as well as for PCI E1 so this guy runs at 16x if you put a
single graphics card in up to 16x PCIe 3.0 then if you put in two PCI Express
3.0 ready graphics cards these two are going to run at 8X and 8x remember PCI
E3 8X is equivalent to PCI E2 16x so
even with high-end graphics cards you shouldn't get any bottlenecking as long
as you're using a PCI E3 ready CPU that is ivybridge two PCI E3 ready slots and
PCI E3 ready graphics cards this last guy right here due to bandwidth
limitations so that is how many PCI E3 lanes are running off of the CPU it's
recommended to only use this one if you're running an ivybridge
CPU next moving on to the back panel control or back panel I/O we've got four
USB 2.0 ports a PS2 Port which I still
do like to see guys clear Simo switch Optical and coaxial audio out HDMI
gigabit Ethernet two USB 3.0 ports running off the Intel chipset VGA DVI
and 7.1 audio out here's another thing that you guys may or may not have seen
just yet actually hold on a second yeah yeah here we go so you see that little
oh I fell uh you see that little virtue logo right there this board uses virtue
MVP which is a more flexible updated version of the original Lucid virtue
which was on the uh z uh the the uh z68
platform I think hold on sorry guys h67
I knew that wasn't right um so what this
allows you to do is you can use your you can use your integrated GPU to do quick
sync which is your quick video encoding that's running off of the graphics core
on the CPU itself and with virtue MVP
you can also use your integrated CPU to boost the performance of even a high
power dedicated graphics card as long as the the game supports it so that's a
pretty neat thing I haven't tested this out yet though but I'm very excited to
check it out don't forget to subscribe to Linus techtips for more unboxings
reviews and other computer videos sorry guys I forgot the fan headers we've got
one two three I saw another one three pwm fan headers as well as two three pin
fan headers