Welcome to yet another motherboard unboxing online tech tips. This is the
MSI 9990 FXA GD80. So the title tells us
a few things. It tells us this is a 990 FX motherboard. It tells us it has USB
3, as I recall correctly, is what that suffix means. and it is a GD80, which
means it is part of their premium line
of boards. So, it has a three-year warranty in Canada, Mexico, and the USA.
It features their military class 2 concept, which means higher quality
components for longer lifetime, cooler operation, and better reliability. It
features full support for AMD unlocked FX series processors. These are not yet
released, but they will be supported on this board once they are. full support
for AMD Crossfire X, NVIDIA SLI, and Windows 7. I pretty much take it for
granted. Um, it features OCG2, which is
one-touch overclocking, USB 3, and SATA 3 6 GB per second. On the back of the
board, we see a few things here. High Caps with tantelum cores for eight times
longer lifetime. Anticipated uh super far chokes for 30% higher current capac
capacity and solid capacitors for 10 plus years of ultraong lifetime. We also
have um Hm, that's funny. It doesn't say
anything about click BIOS on here, although I would think that this
particular board would support it, but I have no way of knowing for
sure other than firing it up. So, here is the quick guide, which gives us a
look at the Oh, here we go. BIOS setup. No, it does not feature click BIOS, I
guess, unless they just haven't updated this document.
Okay, there is a layout of the board itself showing you where everything is
and what everything is, but that's okay. We're going to show you the board itself anyway. Drivers and utilities DVD.
Download the latest from the MSI website. Multi-GPU SLI video link card. I think
they mean cable, but that's okay. Another SLI connector and another SLI
connector. Now, mixing and matching these connectors. I am assuming you
would be able to run four-way SLI. So, I
guess that's what they mean for you to do. We've also got six SATA 3 6 GB per
second connectors. All of them are right angle as well as two Molex to SATA power
adapters. Next, we have an internal USB3
header to a PCI USB3 bracket with two
ports on it. We have the M connector to make your front panel connectors and
front USB a little bit easier to hook up. Next, we have a black IO shield. We
have a hard drive backup utility user guide, quick installation guide,
certificate of quality and stability. It's shiny as well.
a software application user guide and a
motherboard user guide. And it looks like based on
everything in this user guide, yeah, this is a standard uh like older style
BIOS board. Although, correct me if I am
wrong on that one, guys. Nope, it's click BIOS. There we go. Yay, we found
it. Uh, so that means you can use the mouse inside the BIOS, although that
looks kind of weird. So, it looks like an older style BIOS with a mouse cursor
on it, but I don't know what they're going for here. Also features supercharger, so you can charge your
iPad, iPhone, or mobile phone at high
speed, even while the computer is shut down. Very, very useful feature. So,
let's go ahead take the board out of the packaging and we can have a look at
it. Might even draw some little conclusions about what kind of board
we're dealing with here. I can tell you right now, GD80 is going to be a very
high-end board, very overbuilt. You can see there's a boatload of power phases
over here to the left of the CPU socket. I'm just going to move the military
class 2 sticker here. And you can also see that h that is a socket AM3 plus. So
that means that with this bracket you can put any AM3 or AM3 plus compatible
CPU in there. That includes the upcoming Bulldozer
uh CPUs from AMD. You can also use any AM2, AM3, AM2 Plus, any AM whatever uh
CPU cooler as long as it supports the heat output of the CPU that you put
inside. All right, we've got a nice little military class 2 styled uh PWM
heat sink here. We've also got a heat sink for the chipset and another heat
sink for the other more different chipset. Our eight pin power connector
is in the top left in its ideal location and our 24 pin power connector is along
the right hand edge of the board in its ideal location. We've got support for
dual channel DDR3 memory. It is colorcoded for easy dual channel
operation. And moving down the board we have six SATA 36 GB per second ports all
supported by the AMD chipset. So unlike Intel chipsets that are currently out
there, all six are running off the AMD
chipset and they're all running at SATA 3 6 Gbit per second. This is great. This
is the first right angle USB 3 front panel header that I have seen and I like
it. That's a great location for it because as great as it is to have your
front panel headers down here, where most of them still are, this is actually
closer to the front of the case and thus more convenient. Here are our front
panel connectors as well as our an LED
readout. So, there's a post readout. If you're having any issues with the board,
it'll give you an error code here that'll help you fix it. Here's the
front powered USB. So, that is the one that is good for supercharger for the
iPad or uh any other tablet charging them. You will require that higher
powered port. And there's a regular front USB, front FireWire, front panel
audio, little THX sticker going on here.
All right, let's have a look at the PCIe layout. So, we have one PCIe 1X, two,
sorry, two PCIe 1X, four PCIe 16X, and
one PCI. But let's have a look at what these are actually wired for. If you're
going to run in 16x6 mode, you are going to want to use these two slots because
those are running at full bandwidth. These two right here are only running at
8x mode. So, what that means is if you're running three GPUs, you're going
to want to go this one, this one, this one. So, 8X or probably 168 or 8816.
Something along those lines would be my guess. And if you're running four GPUs,
it'll run 8X 8X 8X 8X. Two GPUs 16x 16X.
So, if you do install two graphics cards, you're going to be left with one
PCI, one PCIe 8X, and one PCIe 1X for
expansion. Moving along to the back of the board, we've got two dedicated PS2
ports for keyboard and mouse, respectively. A clear SIMOS button,
optical and coaxial digital audio out. We've got 1 2 3 four USB 2.0 ports.
We've also got Yeah. Oh, sorry. That was six USB 2.0 ports. Right there is one of
those funky esata USB 2 combo ports.
Very handy. FireWire port, gigabit Ethernet, uh USB 3.0, 0 two of those and
7.1 audio out. I want to show you guys
where the fan headers are on this particular board. Here's our CPU fan
header. That is a 4 pin PWM. We've also got a three pin here, a three pin here,
a three pin here, a three pin right here, and that is about it. So,
appropriate build for something like this would be a couple high-end cards,
probably somewhere in the 750 to 850 watt power supply range, and a high-end
6 core or 8 core processor. Thank you for checking out my unboxing of the 990
FXA GD80 from MSI. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for
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