MSI 890FXA-GD70 Quad Crossfire Phenom II X6 Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,642 words · ~8 min read
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So today I'm going to be unboxing MSI's shiniest motherboard box out of their
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updated packaging. You can see that the 890 FXA wording lettering rather is
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actually like sparkly. Very cool. Anyway, this is the 890 FXA GD70
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motherboard. It is the replacement for the very popular 790 FX GD70. So the A
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means that it has support for USB 3.0 as well as SATA 3 or SATA 6 Gbit per
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second. You can see that down here. It still features their OC Genie easy
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overclocking technology along with core unclocking and support for six core CPUs
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out of the box. So that means you've got full support for AMD's Phenom 2 X6. Over
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here we've got everything else. So oh yeah, this is the first time I've seen
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this on their motherboards, but they've been doing this on video cards for a couple generations now. Military class.
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So that means they're using uh well top components as military quality uh
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whatever. So basically that means that they're using only military grade
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components. So high CC cap eight times longer lifespan. They're using icy choke
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20C lower temperatures and then all solid caps for 10 years ultraong
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lifetime. Basically what they're going for is the best possible stability and
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longevity with this motherboard. Everything there we've already covered.
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It has Dr. Moss and MSI's claim and I haven't seen anything to disprove this
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is that one phase of Dr. Moss is greater than or equal to four standard phases of
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MOSFETs. So they switch very fast. They
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are Oh, I just did it again. Uh yeah,
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basically Dr. Moss is really good. That's what they say. Flat heat pipe
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best radiating solution. Oh, okay. So basically it keeps the heat pipe nice
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and low profile as it comes along the motherboard. Okay, let's get this opened
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up. have a quick look at the accessories and then have a look at the A90 FXA
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GD70. Here is our quick guide. I love these MSI quick guides. They give you a
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full size, actually it looks a little bit larger than life uh model of the
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motherboard and then labels everything for you to make life really easy. And
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then there's a more marketing on the back. Thank you. All right. Then for
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other included accessories, we have a drivers and utilities DVD. Don't install
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this. Download the latest off the MSI website. Here is a little uh user guide
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on their hard drive backup solution. Great. We got a quick installation guide
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which is kind of like that other thing except uh more detailed. So, it shows
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you how to install your CPU, RAM, drives, front panel connectors, power,
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set up the BIOS, all that good stuff. Next, we have the BIOS code unlock
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technology. So, a quick guide on how to use their core unlocking utility. Very
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nice. Then, their control center for overclocking. Oh, here's a little user
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guide for that. Very nice. All color. Look at that. All English. Wow.
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Recommended CPU coolers for overclocking. Hm. Okay. These are some
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interesting um Well, I hope they're going somewhere with that. I don't have
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time to read it, though. Next, we've got the users guide, which is not all in
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English. It contains a number of different languages and lots of details
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about stuff. We have an IO shield. We
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have a fairly complete accessory package overall. So, we've got four SATA cables,
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two Molex to SATA adapters, one IDE cable. Then we have two USB 2.0 back
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panel connectors via an uh one of those headers. Oh, here's a bit of a Oh, M
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connector. I was going to say it's kind of like a Q connector, but M. Okay,
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there you go. So, this has a way for you to plug in all of your front panel stuff
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and then plug the whole thing in as a brick to the motherboard. Very neat.
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Then we have a Crossfire bridge. So, this motherboard being a an AMD chipset
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motherboard 890 FX chipset is not SLI
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compatible. However, this is probably the coolest thing about this
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motherboard. And so, I'm going to skip the usual stuff that I show you right
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away and I'm going to show you this right off the bat. This motherboard is a
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standard ATX motherboard and it supports one, two, three, four dual slot graphics
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cards. So you can actually use quad Crossfirex on a standard ATX board. MSI
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has pulled an engineering coup here in order to enable that. Now it's going to
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run 8X 8X 8X 8X in all likelihood,
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although I haven't checked, but 90 90% will, but that doesn't actually have an
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impact on any of the high performance GPUs these days, including the 5870.
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Very cool feature. So we've got their active phase switching technology. This
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is for power saving. What it does is it actually turns off CPU power phases that
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are not in use in order to get the most efficiency whether you're at idle or
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load on your CPU. There's your AM3 socket supporting triple or rather
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triple dual channel DDR3 memory. And it looks like MSI has taken another page
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out of one of their competitors books here and they have their single side
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installation for the memory module. So you just slide it in the one side and
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then clip it shut on the other side. Dr. Moss. Okay. Green Power Express. Cool.
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Rapid boost. Okay, we already talked about this on the back. Let me see if there's anything under this sticker of
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note. And no, there isn't. Oh, yes, there is.
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There is a voltage checkpoint for your RAM right in there. I don't know if the
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cameraman can see that or not. He says not really, but it's in there. I assure
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you it is. Okay, what else do we have? I'm going to see if I can find any other
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voltage checkpoints here. And uh I'm just going to put this down on the table
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so we can have a better look under the good light. Um hm. Not so much so far.
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Well, I'm not going to worry too much about that for now. Why don't we have a
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look at what else this board has to offer? Our eight pin connector is in its
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ideal location up at the top left of the board, right next to this huge, huge,
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beefy looking chipset and MOSFET cooler.
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It looks like the north bridge is actually under this part. And then this
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part is dedicated to cooling the MOSFETs. Here's that flat thick heat
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pipe that they talked about going down to the south bridge there. And then we
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have our 24 pin power connector right where it belongs. One IDE connector.
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Here is a SATA 2 port running off a J Micron controller as as is this IDE port
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and probably an E SATA port on the back. Then on this side we have six SATA 3 6
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Gbit per second ports. So those are running off the SB850 Southbridge. Next
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we have our easy button. I love these. I love these touch sensitive buttons. The
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first time I saw this was on the P-55 GD80, and I'm glad that they're
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continuing to do this cuz I think it's so cool. Then we have a little OC dial,
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so that seems pretty self-explanatory. Plus and minus depending on how fast you
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want the uh CP CPU to go. Then there's
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an OC dial button. I'm guessing that enables it. And then we have their green
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power button. Okay. Then we have three USB 2.0 front headers. We have FireWire,
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two FireWire front headers. And then in addition to that, we have not a whole
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lot else. I'm going to have one more quick scan here and see if I can find
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like a a CPU voltage readout point or
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anything like that. No, no, there's
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nothing. Well, you know what? It might be there somewhere. If you can find it,
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feel free to leave a comment on my video and let me know where it is. Let's have
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a look at the back panel connectors. Oh, cameraman wants to look at that sweet uh
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VRM and Northbridge cooling solution. I think that is very cool. I really like
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it actually. Here, get it from this angle. Get it from this angle. See,
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these are actually wavy in order to give it slightly more surface area and a
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little bit better turbulence for any air flow that does happen to go through there. Very cool. Okay. Oh, yeah. I
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guess the rest of the slots I didn't even talk about. There's one more PCIe1x
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slot in a PCI slot. As if anyone cares. If you buy this motherboard, do me a
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favor. Load it up with a bunch of graphics cards cuz that is what it is
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for. Okay, let's have a look at our connectors. On the back, we got PS2
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mouse and keyboard, two dedicated ports. We have a clear SIMOS button in its
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very, very ideal location. Right on the back, we have optical as well as coaxial
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audio out, so digital formats both. Then
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we have one of those USB ESATA ports, so
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six USB 2.0 ports, one ESATA. Then we
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have 2 GB Ethernet, two USB 3.0, as well
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as 7.1 audio out. Thank you for checking out my unboxing of the 890 FXA GD70.