MSI P67A-GD65 Sandybridge Motherboard Review

The MSI P67A-GD65 arrives in blue and white box which highlights the use of ‘Military Class II' components. We have covered this many times before on KitGuru. MSI use HI-C Capacitors with Tantalum cores which extremely high conductivity and up to 15x less leakage. This is apparently the same material which is used on Space Shuttles. MSI are also utilising Super Ferrite Chokes with 10% better power efficiency and 30% higher current capacity. This can aid the overclocking capabilities.

The bundle is comprehensive, with driver discs, literature on the product, back plate, converter cables, sata cables, SLI cable and a USB 3.0 adapter.

The ATX board layout is mainly positive with plenty of room around the CPU for oversized coolers.

MSI include overclocking ‘friendly' features, such as the onboard power and reset buttons, and an OC Genie button. There is also a clear CMOS button on the rear I/O panel, which is just as well because a dual slot graphics card covers the CMOS switch and makes removing the CMOS battery impossible when fitted. This is a bizarre decision, but thankfully it is slightly negated by the rear mounted button.

Thera are eight SATA ports on the board, four of which support SATA 6Gbps. They are well positioned in a parallel configuration meaning they take up the least amount of room possible.

As we discussed earlier, the CPU socket has a lot of space around it, thanks to MSI reducing the size of the cooling sinks.

There are two PCI-E Slots. One will operate in 16x, but if two are connected it drops to 8x speed. There are two PCI slots and a single 1x PCI-E slot. The board can take a maximum of 32GB of DDR3 over the four slots at speeds up to 2,400mhz. Sound is covered by Intel HD Audio across the Realtek ALc892, offering 8 channel support. Networking is handled by the Realtek 8111E Gigabit Ethernet connection.

Rear connectivity is strong, with 8 USB 2.0 ports (14 total) and 2 USB 3.0 ports available. There are also two eSATA connectors, a reset CMOS switch, a PS2 port for older devices, gigabit lan and Firewire. Audio out, line in, mic, optical S/PDIF and coaxial out are also present.

Become a Patron!