MSI Z68A-GD80 Sandy Bridge Core i7 SLI Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,370 words · ~6 min read
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so today we'll be doing a quick unboxing of the MSI
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z68a gd80 B3 motherboard so the z68a
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gd80 B3 motherboard features their military Class 2 concept which means
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they have the super farite chokes the high SE caps with the tantalum core
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which is very rare evidently you have solid caps with up to a 10year life time
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of solid use as well as their OC Genie
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technology USB 3 SATA 6 SLI Crossfire X
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and full support for Intel's full lineup of Intel core I3 I5 i7 processors on LGA
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1155 it features a three-year warranty in Canada and the US and in other
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regions I have no idea so here there's just a little bit more explanation of
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what military Class 2 means as well as a
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list of their features including their win key3 which is uh like a quick OS you
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can log into in the BIOS if you want to browse the internet or go on Skype or
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not load Windows for whatever reason uh Supercharger so you can charge your iPad
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iPhone and mobile at high speed even when your PC is shut down that's a cool
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feature as well as their instant overclocking which is obviously tied
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into OC Genie which is their one button overclocking press the button you're
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overclocked remember OC gen only works with K series processors though okay
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three PCI Express 16x slots for up to the three-way Crossfire or two-way
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SLI and finally overclock in 1 second OC
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gen2 yes so Auto detect overclock CPU
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memory oh and the integrated GPU now remember with the z68 chipset the
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integrated GPU clock speed is actually going to matter even if you're using a
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dedicated graphics card and the reason for that is that the z68 chipset allows
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you to use the integrated GPU to accelerate video encoding so that's
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pretty cool so that will affect that performance okay here we have extreme
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power design so 12 phases uh we have Dr Moss as well as an extra six pin VGA
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power connector for providing more power to the PCIe slots we have two BIOS chips
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just in case one of them has some kind of a problem maybe during flashing or
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whatever the case may be you will have no problem restoring from the second
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BIOS chip let me just pull the board out
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see we've got some nice environmentally friendly packaging going on here just
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going to move that there camera okay see
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if there's anything I'm missing here so there's another note about tur
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supercharger oh okay so the supercharger USB ports are marked you know what I'll
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show you the uh the accessories first and then we'll go through any other features so here's a little map of the
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board as well as some key points about
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the board that you could find on the box if you so desired drivers and utilities
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DVD throw it away download the latest off the MSI website you've got M
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connectors which are an easier way to plug in your front USB uh and front panel connectors quick
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installation guide 1 2 3 4 sat 3 6 GB per second
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cables which are not different except that they are white and then you have
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two Molex to SATA power cables IO Shield
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uh vck cables so this board features vck which means that you can use a digital
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multimeter to uh manually check the voltages going to some of the key
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components we have an SLI Bridge remember your Crossfire bridge should be included with your graphics card USB
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three rear panel header with an internal
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uh internal pinout okay just in case
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your case doesn't have extra I have front USB 3 and you still want to use
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the extra ports so you've got a user guide as well as a software user guide
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all right the board
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itself there we are so military Class 2 sticker comes off and oh this is
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interesting looks like they've changed the uh they've changed the socket cover
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from what they were using before which was uh a piece that goes
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under so I don't even know how this one works look at that there okay that's how
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it works take off our ocg E2 thing and
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let's have a look at the board so why don't we start in the CPU socket area so
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here's where your LGA 1155 CPU goes that
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will give you uh full support as I I said before for core I3 Core i5 and core
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i7 processors here's your 12-phase power design as well as your tantalum core
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little guys here so that's part of the military Class 2 concept which is
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prominently featured on The Branding on the board we've got our 8 Pin CPU
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connector up here and it's ideal location in the top left corner big fan
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of that personally as well as four DDR3
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slots for dual Channel memory we've got
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our 24 pin connector in its ideal location along the right hand Edge as
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well as V check points here so we have checkpoints for the vccp CPU VT CPU gfx
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so that's the onboard VGA VCC DDR as
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well as PCH what is that pch1
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p05 interesting as well as two ground
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points all right moving down we have two
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SATA 3 6 G oh rather hold on hold on just a minute SATA 56 sat 3 4 yeah two
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SATA 3 6 gbit per second four SATA 2 3
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gbit per second then we have an additional SATA 3 6 GB per second
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running off of a third-party controller all right here are our front USB ports
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this is the one with supercharge the one with the red background behind it I
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don't know if you can see that red background can you um okay and then we've also got our
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USB 3 front panel header OC Genie button
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power reset another oh no this is a fire
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wire front panel header our front audio as well as our PCIe slot so PCI slot
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layout we've got uh one two 3 PCI e6x
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slots we have two PCI e1x slots and two
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PCI slots so if you are installing three
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dual Slot Cards you will have left now you got to make sure you have a case
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that has an additional PCI slot because it's going to hang over the edge but you
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will be left with one PCI e1x slot and
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one PCI slot so that's very rich EXP expansion capabilities if you running a
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three-way graphics card configuration if you're running a two-way graphics card
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configuration you're going to be left with one PCI E1 one PCI and one PCI e16
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here's that uh PCI Express six pin power
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connector right here so if you are running a few graphics cards you're probably going to want to plug that in
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to make sure that you're providing all the juice you need to your graphics
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cards here on the back the io Shield we have one of those PS2 uh keyboard mouse
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combo ports we have optical audio out a
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reset Simo switch I love the reset Simo switch on the back IO I'm a big fan of
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that okay we have 1 2 3 4 really four
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USB 2.0 ports that's it okay four USB
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2.0 ports uh we have eSATA fire wire
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dual gigabit Ethernet two USB 3.0 ports so that is still a total of six USB
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ports we have DVI out as well as HDMI
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out and 7.1 audio out so thank you for
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checking out out my unboxing of the z68a
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gd80 B3 and let me just see if there's anything that I missed here I don't
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think there is don't forget to subscribe to lus detectives for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos