MSI P55-GD85 Core i5 SLI USB3.0 SATA3 Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
1,445 words · ~7 min read
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so I've done quite a few videos of the ASUS and the Gigabyte updated p55
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lineups but I haven't actually covered the one that MSI did so they took their
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original p-55 gd80 they added five no
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what they actually added is SATA 3 which is 6 gbit per second as well as USB 3.0
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which is 10 times the speed of USB 2.0 at 5 GB per second so that's the most
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important change it still features Crossfire SLI and OC Genie as well as
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the superpipe and Dr Moss just like the p55 gd80 but it does come with these
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additional updated features it's a little bit more expensive but without
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further Ado let's get into the package so oh it looks like MSI has started
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including the uh M connector which is kind of like the ASUS um I think they
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call it Q connector either way it's an easy way to plug in your front USB and
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front connectors if you don't have the bunched up uh the bunched up block
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cables okay next we have a
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crossfire oh oh that's neat okay well they're actually including a crossfire
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bridge I guess because the spacing is more than the standard Crossfire spacing
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that's pretty nice normally you're only going to get a crossfire Bridge with
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your video card now we have an SLI video cable so that is something that we
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definitely need if we are running SLI I'm kind of rambling here that's okay
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I've got an IDE cable it's red and yellow so it's stylish next we have two
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Molex two SATA connect connectors and four red SATA cables with locking
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connectors awesome next we have two USB
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ports for the back of your case these are both highspeed USB not super speed
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USB so that's USB 2.0 then we've got an
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IO Shield oh it looks like they've also
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added a clear seimo switch to the back of the board thumbs up for that I love
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that next we have their uh V check
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cables so these cables plug into various spots on the board and allow you to use
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a Multimeter use the multimeter to measure the
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current voltage there you go just like that MSI explains exactly what it does
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drivers and utilities DVD don't use anything on there download everything
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the latest from the MSI site a hard disk storage backup and restore utility okay
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cool next we have a quick installation guide which looks like it's going to
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unfold to about the size of the cameraman's
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office uh y okay so that gives you a
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quick guide to CPU RAM uh SATA and Optical installation or hard drive
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obstacle installation graphics card installation uh front panel this is the
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useful stuff showing you how to hook up your front panel connectors and all that
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good stuff power and some basic bio settings oh that's kind of nice okay so
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that quick installation guide is covered in logos like autog
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gsse okay next we have wow they have so many accessories it's sheesh okay so
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control center guide about Ms siiz useful motherboard useful software okay
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that's nice then we have a win which is their quick on feature then we have an
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OC Genie guide okay wow they've included
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so many more little guides versus the original gd80 it's funny that they
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actually even include an OC geni guide because OC Genie is by definition a like
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a one button function uh oh this is like thick and
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there's your user guide in billion different languages all right finally we
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get down to the board so let's get this out of here let's get this out of here
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here and let's get this baby opened up
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so let's get the tape off there we go
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just kind of pull the motherboard out being careful not to actually touch the
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PCB on the back so I'm actually touching the back plate there okay so the
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motherboard itself like all p-55 boards we are going to find an LGA 1156 socket
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in the middle you can see it's got like a black mirrored finish on it much like
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evga's high-end boards you can see it's using a Loz socket which is the the one
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that is rated for uh more even contact with the CPU so you're not going to burn
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out your CPU and your socket with even extreme
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overclocking okay we've got a couple stickers on here one of them is for 1
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second overclocking with OC Genie and the other one is for superpipe and Dr
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Moss okay let's see what else we got here so like all p55 boards we have
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support for dual Channel DDR3 up to 16 gigs then we've got our 24 pin connector
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and our 8 Pin power connectors in their ideal locations along the right hand
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hand Edge in top left of the board next we've got oh this is good okay so we got
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our V check so this is going to allow us to check our CPU CPU VT RAM PCH and then
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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
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got our six SATA 2 connectors so those are all running off of the MSI chipset
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our MSI Intel chipset then we have SATA 7 and SATA 8 so those are both SATA 3
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6.0 gbit pers second connectors
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next we have an additional connector I don't even know what that's running off of probably running off the same J
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Micron chipset as this IDE connector here as well as the I'm going to go
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ahead and assume that there's an EA port on the back that is also running off it
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and it's right there okay so next we've got oh these I love so oh they've
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actually improved this so you've got your power button your reset button and
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these are touch sensitive buttons very cool and then you've actually got the
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direct OC buttons which used to be a physical button kind of like the OC
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Genie button here but now these are touch sensitive to increase or decrease
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the base clock pretty cool then we have three USB 2.0 headers one firewire
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header there's our seos battery and then here we've got our slots so it looks
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like they've actually reduced the number of slots off the gd80 but honestly I
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mean okay you're going to install two graphics cards so you're going to still
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be ending up with a PCI slot as well as a PCI e1x slot even if you have two
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double slot graphics cards so really it's enough expansion options for 99% of
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people out there now they've actually cut down on the heat pipe cooling a
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little bit which I can understand cuz they're adding features but I mean
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really I would have lik to see something at least as beefy as the gd80 I mean if
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they're saying it's enough uh I mean look at this thing it's huge you've got
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like this huge heat pipe you've got all these fins to dissipate heat
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realistically it's not going to get that hot anyway so MSI seems to have done a
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pretty good job there with that thick heat pipe now let's go around to the
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back of the board and have a look at what we got so we've got two PS2 ports
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one for the keyboard one for the mouse a clear SEO switch I love that I love
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having a switch on the back of the board for that you screw something up you just press that button and sets everything
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back to factory defaults next we have Optical as well as coaxial audio out
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then we have fire wire 46 USB 2.0 ports remember this is one of
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those SATA eata USB combo ports very cool ports then we have two usb3 ports 2
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GB Ethernet as well as 7.1 audio so this is a fully featured board SLI Crossfire
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the works and thank you for checking out my unboxing of the p-55 gt85