MSI P67A-GD65 Motherboard Review

A Closer LookThe P67A-GD65 follows MSI’s standard blue and black theme. It is very aesthetically pleasing and nobody should have any complaints about the looks. It isn’t the best looking board on the market, but is by no means the worst either.

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The blue ascents on the VRM are a very smooth blue which stands out, but not too much and has the OC Genie II and Military Class II branding on them..

The Southbridge heatsink is the same with the MSI logo branded on top.

The VRM heatsinks are low-profile enough to allow clearance for even the largest of CPU coolers.

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The DIMM slots alternate blue and black in colour. Each colour represents the same channel so that dual channel mode is easy to use. The board supports up to 32GB of DDR3 1066/1333/1600/2133 MHz in dual channel mode.

There is just enough space between the DIMM slots and CPU socket to accommodate very large CPU heatsinks or tall RAM.

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The PCI-E x16 length slots are dark blue with the other expansion slots being a dark black. The second PCI-E x16 slot is locked at x8 bandwidth. The expansion slot spacing is very well thought out, making it capable to accommodate 2 dual slot graphics cards with a PCI-E x1 slot or card allowing cooling between them. When full, the board can accommodate 2 dual slot graphics cards, 2 PCI-E x1 cards and a PCI card. That is pretty impressive!

The front panel headers are in their ideal location at the bottom right of the board

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Positioning the USB 2.0 and 3.0 headers towards the centre of the bottom edge of the board shouldn’t cause any problems.

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We are disappointed to see only 1 USB 2.0 header when at least an extra one could fit easily.

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The 8 right angled SATA ports are in a great location. The 4 black ports in the centre operate at SATA 3GB/s speeds from the P67 chipset and support RAID 0, 1, 5 AND 10. The 2 white ports on the right operate at SATA 6GB/s speeds from the P67 chipset and also support RAID 0, 1, 5, 10. The 2 white ports on the left operate at SATA 6GB/s speeds from the Marvell SE9128 chipset and support RAID 0 and 1. We feel it should be easier to differentiate between the native and add-on SATA 6GB/s ports. I for one am glad to see no IDE port included.

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The 24-pin power connector is a little further into the board than we would have liked to see it. This could make cable management slightly more awkward.

The 8-pin eATX connector is in its ideal location near the VRM cooling.

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The board features 4 x 3-pin fan headers scattered around the board in useful locations. The speed of system fans 1 and 2 can easily be controlled via the BIOS with a percentage speed settings. A fan header positioned above the expansion slots.

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Another located near the SATA ports.

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The final 2 situated next to the 24-pin connector.

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The CPU fan header is in a great location near the CPU socket.

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MSI have positioned the “V-Check” voltage checkpoint just above the 24-pin connector. We feel that this is a great location.

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The rear I/O includes a PS/2 keyboard/mouse port, 8 x USB 2.0 ports, clear CMOS button, coaxial and optical SPDIF ports, IEEE1394 port, 2 x eSATA ports running from a JMicron JMB362 chipset, Gigabit LAN, 2 x USB 3.0 ports and finally 8-channel audio.

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