so I've done quite a few videos of the ASUS and the Gigabyte updated p55
lineups but I haven't actually covered the one that MSI did so they took their
original p-55 gd80 they added five no
what they actually added is SATA 3 which is 6 gbit per second as well as USB 3.0
which is 10 times the speed of USB 2.0 at 5 GB per second so that's the most
important change it still features Crossfire SLI and OC Genie as well as
the superpipe and Dr Moss just like the p55 gd80 but it does come with these
additional updated features it's a little bit more expensive but without
further Ado let's get into the package so oh it looks like MSI has started
including the uh M connector which is kind of like the ASUS um I think they
call it Q connector either way it's an easy way to plug in your front USB and
front connectors if you don't have the bunched up uh the bunched up block
cables okay next we have a
crossfire oh oh that's neat okay well they're actually including a crossfire
bridge I guess because the spacing is more than the standard Crossfire spacing
that's pretty nice normally you're only going to get a crossfire Bridge with
your video card now we have an SLI video cable so that is something that we
definitely need if we are running SLI I'm kind of rambling here that's okay
I've got an IDE cable it's red and yellow so it's stylish next we have two
Molex two SATA connect connectors and four red SATA cables with locking
connectors awesome next we have two USB
ports for the back of your case these are both highspeed USB not super speed
USB so that's USB 2.0 then we've got an
IO Shield oh it looks like they've also
added a clear seimo switch to the back of the board thumbs up for that I love
that next we have their uh V check
cables so these cables plug into various spots on the board and allow you to use
a Multimeter use the multimeter to measure the
current voltage there you go just like that MSI explains exactly what it does
drivers and utilities DVD don't use anything on there download everything
the latest from the MSI site a hard disk storage backup and restore utility okay
cool next we have a quick installation guide which looks like it's going to
unfold to about the size of the cameraman's
office uh y okay so that gives you a
quick guide to CPU RAM uh SATA and Optical installation or hard drive
obstacle installation graphics card installation uh front panel this is the
useful stuff showing you how to hook up your front panel connectors and all that
good stuff power and some basic bio settings oh that's kind of nice okay so
that quick installation guide is covered in logos like autog
gsse okay next we have wow they have so many accessories it's sheesh okay so
control center guide about Ms siiz useful motherboard useful software okay
that's nice then we have a win which is their quick on feature then we have an
OC Genie guide okay wow they've included
so many more little guides versus the original gd80 it's funny that they
actually even include an OC geni guide because OC Genie is by definition a like
a one button function uh oh this is like thick and
there's your user guide in billion different languages all right finally we
get down to the board so let's get this out of here let's get this out of here
here and let's get this baby opened up
so let's get the tape off there we go
just kind of pull the motherboard out being careful not to actually touch the
PCB on the back so I'm actually touching the back plate there okay so the
motherboard itself like all p-55 boards we are going to find an LGA 1156 socket
in the middle you can see it's got like a black mirrored finish on it much like
evga's high-end boards you can see it's using a Loz socket which is the the one
that is rated for uh more even contact with the CPU so you're not going to burn
out your CPU and your socket with even extreme
overclocking okay we've got a couple stickers on here one of them is for 1
second overclocking with OC Genie and the other one is for superpipe and Dr
Moss okay let's see what else we got here so like all p55 boards we have
support for dual Channel DDR3 up to 16 gigs then we've got our 24 pin connector
and our 8 Pin power connectors in their ideal locations along the right hand
hand Edge in top left of the board next we've got oh this is good okay so we got
our V check so this is going to allow us to check our CPU CPU VT RAM PCH and then
we've got a couple of ground connections so that we can actually check up to two at a time next we've got oh okay we've
got our six SATA 2 connectors so those are all running off of the MSI chipset
our MSI Intel chipset then we have SATA 7 and SATA 8 so those are both SATA 3
6.0 gbit pers second connectors
next we have an additional connector I don't even know what that's running off of probably running off the same J
Micron chipset as this IDE connector here as well as the I'm going to go
ahead and assume that there's an EA port on the back that is also running off it
and it's right there okay so next we've got oh these I love so oh they've
actually improved this so you've got your power button your reset button and
these are touch sensitive buttons very cool and then you've actually got the
direct OC buttons which used to be a physical button kind of like the OC
Genie button here but now these are touch sensitive to increase or decrease
the base clock pretty cool then we have three USB 2.0 headers one firewire
header there's our seos battery and then here we've got our slots so it looks
like they've actually reduced the number of slots off the gd80 but honestly I
mean okay you're going to install two graphics cards so you're going to still
be ending up with a PCI slot as well as a PCI e1x slot even if you have two
double slot graphics cards so really it's enough expansion options for 99% of
people out there now they've actually cut down on the heat pipe cooling a
little bit which I can understand cuz they're adding features but I mean
really I would have lik to see something at least as beefy as the gd80 I mean if
they're saying it's enough uh I mean look at this thing it's huge you've got
like this huge heat pipe you've got all these fins to dissipate heat
realistically it's not going to get that hot anyway so MSI seems to have done a
pretty good job there with that thick heat pipe now let's go around to the
back of the board and have a look at what we got so we've got two PS2 ports
one for the keyboard one for the mouse a clear SEO switch I love that I love
having a switch on the back of the board for that you screw something up you just press that button and sets everything
back to factory defaults next we have Optical as well as coaxial audio out
then we have fire wire 46 USB 2.0 ports remember this is one of
those SATA eata USB combo ports very cool ports then we have two usb3 ports 2
GB Ethernet as well as 7.1 audio so this is a fully featured board SLI Crossfire
the works and thank you for checking out my unboxing of the p-55 gt85