MSI Z77A-GD80 & R7770 Power Edition Transthermal OC Review

MSI artwork is very distinctive, and this box highlights the ‘Military Class III' components. MSI also focus on the claim that they are the World's first to market with Thunderbolt technology.

The box is a gatefold design, opening up with an overview of the motherboard and the technologies. The lower panel is focused entirely on Thunderbolt.

The MSI bundle is extensive. There is a quick guide, software disc, software and user manual, backplate I/O, SATA cables, SLI cable, USB 3.0 panel and voltage readout (V-Check) cables.

The ATX motherboard is built on a dark PCB with blue ports and black and blue heatsinks. This is a socket LGA1155 which supports both Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge processors.

The motherboard has four memory slots (dual channel), which support DDR3 1066/1333/1600/1866*/2000*/2133*(OC), 2200*/2400*/2600*/2667*/2800*(OC, 22nm CPU required). Next to these slots is a power, reset and overclock button (O.C. Genie).

Underneath the 24 pin Motherboard power connector there is a V-Check point connector which is useful if you wish to monitor CPU, CPU Graphics, DDR VCC, PCH 1P05 and VCCP voltages with a digital multimeter.

The board ships with a warning sticker. If you use a 2500/2600/2700 processor then the bottom PCIe lane will be lost. MSI recommend an Ivy Bridge chip. The board has 3 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots and 4 x PCIe 2.0 x1 slots.

Along the bottom of the board are various USB and audio headers, and the front panel connector. There is a diagnostic LED just underneath the passively cooled heatsink in this area.

Next to the ram slots are 10 LED lights. One of the LED's is the DrMos alarm system and the other LED's showcase the power phase currently being adopted by the CPU.

Another useful sticker, if you are too lazy to refer to the manual. The two white ports on the right are native SATA 6Gb/s connectors for the latest Solid State Drives.

There are a total of 8 SATA ports, the four black ports in the middle are SATA II 3 Gbps rated. The two white ports on the left are SATA III 6Gbp/s rated and linked to the ASMedia ASM1061 controller.

The front USB 3.0 header is mounted horizontally to the PCB, which is ideal to keep cable routing as tidy as possible.

Yes, you can spot the Thunderbolt connector underneath the VGA port.

Back Panel I/O Ports

• 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse port
• 1 x Clear CMOS button
• 1 x Coaxial S/PDIF-out port
• 1 x Optical S/PDIF-out  port
• 4 x USB 2.0  ports
• 2 x USB 3.0  ports
• 1 x RJ45 LAN jack
• 1 x 6 in 1 audio jack
• 1 x HDMI® port with max. resolution up to 1920×1200 @60Hz
• 1 x DisplayPort with max. resolution up to 1920×1200 @60Hz
• 1 x VGA port  with max. resolution up to 2048×1536 @75Hz

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