MSI 990FXA-GD80 Premium Gaming Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,408 words · ~7 min read
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Welcome to yet another motherboard unboxing online tech tips. This is the
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MSI 9990 FXA GD80. So the title tells us
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a few things. It tells us this is a 990 FX motherboard. It tells us it has USB
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3, as I recall correctly, is what that suffix means. and it is a GD80, which
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means it is part of their premium line
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of boards. So, it has a three-year warranty in Canada, Mexico, and the USA.
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It features their military class 2 concept, which means higher quality
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components for longer lifetime, cooler operation, and better reliability. It
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features full support for AMD unlocked FX series processors. These are not yet
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released, but they will be supported on this board once they are. full support
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for AMD Crossfire X, NVIDIA SLI, and Windows 7. I pretty much take it for
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granted. Um, it features OCG2, which is
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one-touch overclocking, USB 3, and SATA 3 6 GB per second. On the back of the
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board, we see a few things here. High Caps with tantelum cores for eight times
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longer lifetime. Anticipated uh super far chokes for 30% higher current capac
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capacity and solid capacitors for 10 plus years of ultraong lifetime. We also
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have um Hm, that's funny. It doesn't say
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anything about click BIOS on here, although I would think that this
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particular board would support it, but I have no way of knowing for
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sure other than firing it up. So, here is the quick guide, which gives us a
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look at the Oh, here we go. BIOS setup. No, it does not feature click BIOS, I
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guess, unless they just haven't updated this document.
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Okay, there is a layout of the board itself showing you where everything is
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and what everything is, but that's okay. We're going to show you the board itself anyway. Drivers and utilities DVD.
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Download the latest from the MSI website. Multi-GPU SLI video link card. I think
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they mean cable, but that's okay. Another SLI connector and another SLI
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connector. Now, mixing and matching these connectors. I am assuming you
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would be able to run four-way SLI. So, I
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guess that's what they mean for you to do. We've also got six SATA 3 6 GB per
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second connectors. All of them are right angle as well as two Molex to SATA power
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adapters. Next, we have an internal USB3
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header to a PCI USB3 bracket with two
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ports on it. We have the M connector to make your front panel connectors and
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front USB a little bit easier to hook up. Next, we have a black IO shield. We
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have a hard drive backup utility user guide, quick installation guide,
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certificate of quality and stability. It's shiny as well.
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a software application user guide and a
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motherboard user guide. And it looks like based on
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everything in this user guide, yeah, this is a standard uh like older style
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BIOS board. Although, correct me if I am
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wrong on that one, guys. Nope, it's click BIOS. There we go. Yay, we found
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it. Uh, so that means you can use the mouse inside the BIOS, although that
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looks kind of weird. So, it looks like an older style BIOS with a mouse cursor
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on it, but I don't know what they're going for here. Also features supercharger, so you can charge your
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iPad, iPhone, or mobile phone at high
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speed, even while the computer is shut down. Very, very useful feature. So,
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let's go ahead take the board out of the packaging and we can have a look at
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it. Might even draw some little conclusions about what kind of board
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we're dealing with here. I can tell you right now, GD80 is going to be a very
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high-end board, very overbuilt. You can see there's a boatload of power phases
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over here to the left of the CPU socket. I'm just going to move the military
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class 2 sticker here. And you can also see that h that is a socket AM3 plus. So
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that means that with this bracket you can put any AM3 or AM3 plus compatible
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CPU in there. That includes the upcoming Bulldozer
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uh CPUs from AMD. You can also use any AM2, AM3, AM2 Plus, any AM whatever uh
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CPU cooler as long as it supports the heat output of the CPU that you put
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inside. All right, we've got a nice little military class 2 styled uh PWM
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heat sink here. We've also got a heat sink for the chipset and another heat
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sink for the other more different chipset. Our eight pin power connector
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is in the top left in its ideal location and our 24 pin power connector is along
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the right hand edge of the board in its ideal location. We've got support for
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dual channel DDR3 memory. It is colorcoded for easy dual channel
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operation. And moving down the board we have six SATA 36 GB per second ports all
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supported by the AMD chipset. So unlike Intel chipsets that are currently out
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there, all six are running off the AMD
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chipset and they're all running at SATA 3 6 Gbit per second. This is great. This
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is the first right angle USB 3 front panel header that I have seen and I like
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it. That's a great location for it because as great as it is to have your
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front panel headers down here, where most of them still are, this is actually
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closer to the front of the case and thus more convenient. Here are our front
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panel connectors as well as our an LED
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readout. So, there's a post readout. If you're having any issues with the board,
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it'll give you an error code here that'll help you fix it. Here's the
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front powered USB. So, that is the one that is good for supercharger for the
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iPad or uh any other tablet charging them. You will require that higher
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powered port. And there's a regular front USB, front FireWire, front panel
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audio, little THX sticker going on here.
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All right, let's have a look at the PCIe layout. So, we have one PCIe 1X, two,
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sorry, two PCIe 1X, four PCIe 16X, and
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one PCI. But let's have a look at what these are actually wired for. If you're
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going to run in 16x6 mode, you are going to want to use these two slots because
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those are running at full bandwidth. These two right here are only running at
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8x mode. So, what that means is if you're running three GPUs, you're going
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to want to go this one, this one, this one. So, 8X or probably 168 or 8816.
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Something along those lines would be my guess. And if you're running four GPUs,
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it'll run 8X 8X 8X 8X. Two GPUs 16x 16X.
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So, if you do install two graphics cards, you're going to be left with one
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PCI, one PCIe 8X, and one PCIe 1X for
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expansion. Moving along to the back of the board, we've got two dedicated PS2
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ports for keyboard and mouse, respectively. A clear SIMOS button,
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optical and coaxial digital audio out. We've got 1 2 3 four USB 2.0 ports.
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We've also got Yeah. Oh, sorry. That was six USB 2.0 ports. Right there is one of
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those funky esata USB 2 combo ports.
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Very handy. FireWire port, gigabit Ethernet, uh USB 3.0, 0 two of those and
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7.1 audio out. I want to show you guys
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where the fan headers are on this particular board. Here's our CPU fan
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header. That is a 4 pin PWM. We've also got a three pin here, a three pin here,
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a three pin here, a three pin right here, and that is about it. So,
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appropriate build for something like this would be a couple high-end cards,
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probably somewhere in the 750 to 850 watt power supply range, and a high-end
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6 core or 8 core processor. Thank you for checking out my unboxing of the 990
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FXA GD80 from MSI. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for
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unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.