MSI Z77A-GD65 GAMING Motherboard Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,642 words · ~8 min read
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Welcome to another unboxing and first look. This is a bit of a strange product
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because we're pretty close to the launch of Intel's Haswell architecture and
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that's going to require a new socket, but MSI has just introduced their gaming
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series of motherboards. So, it's going to be pretty obvious right from the
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start that the Z77A GD65 gaming takes a
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lot of cues from the original Z77A GD65
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with some enhancements. So, it doesn't cost that much more, but it does cost
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more, but you get a couple of things for your money. So, number one is right here
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on the front of the box, and that's the Killer E2200 game networking. So, that's
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network prioritization for your games. The Killer software has some other cool
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features like being able to bandwidth cap certain applications through
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software. Like if you want to limit the speed of a YouTube upload, for example,
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you can do that. Um, they've also got some Fanatic branding on it. I don't
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know how much Team Fanatic knows about motherboards, but at any rate, this
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particular series of motherboards is recommended by Team Fanatic, and it
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comes with this pretty sweet sticker that looks a little something like this. Other than that, we've got what is
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essentially pretty much a GD65, which is a very solid board. One of my favorites
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to be perfectly honest on the Z77 platform. And let's have a look at what
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they've got to say for themselves on the back. So, yeah, you still get OCG2, which is one button overclocking.
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Military class 3, so that's military class components having passed the mil
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STD. Uh, well, I'm sure they mean standard, not STD. Uh, 810G testing.
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Okay. And then there's the killer Ethernet right there, which it's it's
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hard to say how much of a difference that makes over a solid um Intel
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networking solution. But when I was using it, what I can tell you is that I
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did notice for particularly for me the a
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big difference in the convenience level of being able to make on the-fly
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adjustments to how much bandwidth applications are allowed to use. So
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here's that sticker I talked about before. It's a nice sort of solid
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sticker. Got a 3M backing on it. You put that on your case. Should look pretty cool. There you go. What else we got in
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here? All right.
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Four SATA 3 6 GB per second right angle cables. All right. We've got M
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connectors. So, those are for people who have trouble plugging in the little
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connectors for front USB 2 as well as front panel sort of switches and
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whatnot. SLI flexible black connector.
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Those are my favorites. Drivers and utilities. Download this from the MSI
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website. Uh software and application user guide, quick start guide, user
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guide. Ah, a door hanger. Love seeing
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these included. I'm sorry. Busy gaming and I'm not here. So, those are the only
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two options. Busy gaming and not here at all. All right. So, voltage checkpoints.
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And finally, the back panel connector, which has a new red and black color
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scheme. Can you see that B-roll? Awesome. All right. So, let's have a
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look at the board itself. Actually, I shouldn't have said that the networking
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thing was the only thing that changed about it, cuz there were some other things as well. So, layout-wise, we've
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got an allnew cooling solution. So, there's a single heat pipe. It's not a
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super pipe. It's just a regular sized heat pipe that leads between two sort of
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dragon themed looking heat sinks. They look outstanding. I kind of wish that it
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was a design element that you could really appreciate from the top because
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most of the time you won't be looking at your motherboard from this angle. But
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either way, it does look outstanding, and I do really I I mean, I kind of I
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kind of geek out over sort of MOSFET cooling solutions cuz I think they look
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cool. Um, so they've changed that. Other than that, the board is pretty much GD65
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DNA. So, you've got your LG 1155 socket here supporting up to second generation
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Core i3, i5, and i7 processors. All the overclocking features of course enabled.
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You've got an eight pin connector here for your CPU power, four pin CPU fan,
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and then some more fans that are elsewhere. We'll show you those later.
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Uh, four DDR3 dim slots supporting up to
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8 gig modules. You've got onboard buttons, which I personally really
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appreciate. I use an open test bench a lot. Power reset and OCI, which is the
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one button overclocking. These little LEDs up here show you how many power
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phases are enabled. Up to eight power phases on your CPU. So it'll really it's
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just an indicator of what your CPU load looks like. Here's your V checkpoint so
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you can check CPU voltage, DDR voltage, a few other key voltages using a
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multimeter rather than relying on software. Your 24 pin connectors and at
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its ideal location along the right hand edge of the board. This I love. This is
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probably worth like money to me. Like I'd pay an extra few bucks for a board
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with a right angle USB 3 because those connectors are so bulky and the cables
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are so stiff that when you have to when you try to cable management, it ends up
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coming in a big loop like this. Whereas if it's on the side, you can actually
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run it somewhere directly without ending up with a big huge loop. So love to see
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that we've got two SATA 3 6 Gbit per
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second connections that are running off the Intel chipset. two SATA 3 6 gigbit
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per second connections running off a third-party chipset and four more SATA 2
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3 Gbit per second connections running off the Intel chipset. You've got three
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USB 2 headers. This particular one supports supercharger. So that's their
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fast charging for tablets regardless of whether it's iOS or whatever else. A
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hardware dedicated multibio switch. And I'd like to tell a little story here
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about my GD65 board which saved my butt
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because we've got we had a bad flash in the middle of a power outage. Okay, so
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we were flashing the BIOS, power went out. We had no UPS. It bricked it. All I
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had to do was flip the switch and we were back up and running and we had a
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review deadline that was coming up and it just totally saved our butts. So,
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that made me pretty happy. So, I love that switch. You've got an LED readout
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for post problems. Another sort of dragon designed, you know, selfbridge
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heat sink. Honestly, these aren't cooling much these days anymore, so you
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know, it's mostly for show. um three
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four PCIe 1X slots, three PCIe 16X
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slots. However, it's strongly recommended not to use this one unless
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you are running a third generation core processor. So, that's an IV bridge
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processor. It should be noted that you're going to be running an 8x8x mode
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if you're running SLI or Crossfire. And I do not recommend using really any Z77
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board for three-way SLI or Crossfire configurations because even the ones
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that have uh switches on them, I mean, there are latency implications to do
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with that as well. So, all right, the other the other improvement that's being
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made here is a Sound Blaster Cinema implementation. However, this is a
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software implementation. It's still using a Realtech chipset. Um, so it's
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hard to say how much of an improvement that's going to deliver in terms of
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things like, you know, headphone clarity or whatever else, but at least you get
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some more software functionality to go along with your new gaming motherboard.
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Ah, and the last thing that I did miss initially was gaming ports. So, they do
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have USB ports on the board that are specifically optimized for 1,000 Hz
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pulling rates, which some high-end peripherals do support. So, you've got a
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PS2 keyboard mouse combo port. I do still like to see these. Four USB 2.0
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ports. SIMOS clear switch, uh, optical
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and coaxial digital audio out, HDMI,
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VGA, and DVI, two USB 3.0 ports. There's
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that killer nick port, and you've also got 7.1 audio out. Other than that, it's
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a GD65. It's a GD65 with a better color
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scheme that costs a little bit more. Do I object to this? No. I mean, I mean, if
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if you really think about it, it's like, what kind of a build do you want to
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make? Do you want a red one, a yellow one, or a blue one? because you could buy yourself an Empower, a GD65 gaming
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or a GD65 and you're going to have a pretty similar experience. Um, you know,
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the Empower is obviously O OC certified,
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which means that they hand test every board for overclocking. The gaming one
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has the better LAN and sound implementations, and then the GD65
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Vanilla is the vanilla board, but they all have pretty much the same
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functionality and pretty much the same performance when it comes down to it.
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Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos. And I hope you enjoyed
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this video about the Z77 AD65 gaming.