MSI A75MA-G55 A75 FM1 APU Fusion Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,092 words · ~5 min read
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so today I'm going to be doing an unboxing of the MSI a75 ma
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G55 this is part of their military Class 2 standard of motherboards so this
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although it is a microatx board is not a lowend board in terms of the build
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quality or the features okay let's see what kind of badges they've got here on
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the front of it so it's Windows 7 ready good AMD Vision okay AMD recommended USB
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3 SATA 3 6 GB per second and they've got a really shiny certified military
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standard stamp on here that actually looks looks really cool okay let's go
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and look on the back what do we have here so more about military class so
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we've got highly condu sorry about that guys highly conductive polymerized
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capacitors with tantalum cores up to eight times longer lifetime we've got
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super farite chokes with up to 30% higher current capacity and all solid
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caps giving you 10 plus years of ultra long lifetime next we've got the MSI
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control center which allows you to Monitor and tune your computer system click BIOS which means it is UEFI that
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means you can use the mouse in the BIOS and ey charger so you can charge your
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iPad or iPhone or mobile at high speed
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yes you can charge your iPad off of the USB ports on this motherboard although
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only certain ones M flash allows you to easily flash your BIOS and USB Safeguard
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allows you to hm that's interesting so dual current protection allows you to uh
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protect your USB chipset from static damage which can happen on some cases if
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the uh the ports aren't properly configured uh oh this is
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interesting okay um what do we got here so in terms
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of package we have an IO plate this is a PCI back plate with USB 3 so if you
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don't have front USB 3 well at least you can add a couple more ports to the back
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we've got two SATA 3 6 GB per second cables uh remember these are the same as
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SATA 2 3 GB per second cables except they have white tips so those are both
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straight to right angle we have a Molex TSA power adapter we have an IO Shield
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that is helpfully colorcoded we have a military class
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quick installation guide showing you how
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to install your Apu how to install your memory all that good
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stuff there we go next we have drivers in utilities download the latest from
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MSI we have their M connector which allows you to easily plug in your front
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panel switches as well as your front usb2 top quality and stability this is
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your user guide so that's basically the
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quick user guide in a book form with some other
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stuff now on to the board itself this is
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an fm1 socket board so what that means
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is that it is not compatible with phenoms and athlons CP us this is
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compatible with apus so in this case I have an AMD A8 series Apu that I will be
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using with this particular board and that means that it has both a CPU
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component and a GPU component highly
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integrated into this socket so let's
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look at the overall layout here so we have our fm1 socket right here we've got
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what looks like a perfectly normal AMD mounting bracket and it is so these are
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all the same mounting holes and mounting clips that we've seen in the past you can use your old heat sinks no problem
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we've got our power delivery as well as our pwm heat sink here we have a 4 pin
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CPU power connector and it's ideal location at the top left corner we've
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also got four DDR3 dual Channel socket
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so you can plug in up to four sticks of memory running in dual Channel we've got
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our 24 pin power connector in its ideal location a four pin pwm system fan
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connector six SATA 3 6 GB per second
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ports very cool to see that we've got is
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that really a parallel port header okay um there's our front panel connector so
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that's your power and uh hard drive and
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uh reset and all that good stuff okay we've got our front USB another front
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USB front USB 3 off a header this is
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great to see so in addition to the two USB 3 ports at the back of the board
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we've also got two more supplied at the front or with the PCI bracket at the
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back we have our front panel audio and then in terms of slot layout we've got
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dual PCIe 16x slots those are both wired
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for 16x but if you are going to run Crossfire X I believe they are going to
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run at 8X 8X we have our PCI e1x slot as
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well as a PCI slot got another fan header here that's a three pin fan
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header so we have two four pin and one three pin fan headers on this
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motherboard let's move around to the back of the board where we have 1 2 3 4
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USB 2.0 ports one PS2 us uh mouse
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keyboard combo Port we've also got HDMI DVI and VGA out so of note is the fact
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that okay two things this supports dual link DVI so up to 2560 x600 resolution
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and of note is the fact that on the fm1 socket every chip that fits in here an
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APU Chip is going to enable the use of these ports gigabit Ethernet two USB 3.0
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ports and 7.1 audio one of the other features that is highly touted for this
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platform form is dual Graphics which works similar to how hybrid Crossfire
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used to work but better so basically you plug in your Apu you plug in a supported
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GPU and they will actually have the two Graphics cores the two Graphics
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structures work together for directx10 and
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directx11 compatible games and applications to increase performance so
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it's a pretty good value way to upgrade your Apu system if you just need a
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little bit more kick so thank you for checking out my unboxing of the a75
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m55 don't forget to subscribe to lineus Tech tips for more unboxings reviews and
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other computer videos