MSI Z87-GD65 GAMING LGA 1150 Motherboard Review - HardOCP

Date:

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Author:

Daniel Dobrowolski

Editor:

Kyle Bennett

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MSI Z87-GD65 GAMING LGA 1150 Motherboard Review

MSI?s GAMING series is back with an all new entry. The Z87-GD65 GAMING is certainly a promising contender and is one of the more unique offerings we?ve seen from MSI. We liked the last GAMING board we looked at, and we have liked all previous GD-65 series motherboards, hopefully this followup entry can measure up.

Introduction

MSI is no stranger to the motherboard market. It?s offerings have been around since 1986. As a whole the brand is responsible for a lot of products ranging from motherboards to wireless networking hardware to graphics cards and even servers. Despite this diversification its motherboards remain the company?s most well known product offerings. Like its competition MSI offers many choices in a wide spectrum of price points to meet every need.

In an effort to target some audiences more effectively several motherboard manufacturers have spawned sub-brands which cater to specific markets. ASUS has its Republic of Gamers boards, Gigabyte its G1 series. MSI was a bit late to the party but eventually created its Gaming Series. These motherboards have slightly different designs than the standard retail offerings. Motherboards in the Gaming series have a visual style and feature sets which are geared toward gamers in particular. Though many enthusiasts may find gaming motherboards appealing as well given the powerful features usually associated with these.

While ASUS and Gigabyte offer a very broad spectrum of products under the respective Gaming lines MSI is still testing the waters. MSI originally only had the Z77A-G43, Z77A-G45 and Z77A-GD65 motherboards in its lineup. Currently all the products shown on MSI?s website follow this trend with only two new models being made available at this time which use the newer Z87 Express chipset. The Z87-G45 and Z87-GD65 are pretty much follow-up motherboards to last generation?s products.

At present I?m uncertain whether MSI has any plans for higher end offerings which would compete directly with ASUS? ROG lineup or not. If these existing models prove to be successful such an outcome seems like a definite possibility.

The MSI Z87-GD65 GAMING (Volumn Warning - There is a very loud video that plays on this page automatically.) is based on the Intel Z87 Express chipset. The motherboard features many design queues from the normal retail boards while including additional or rather different features from those products. The changes definitely target the gamer and performance enthusiast. DDR3 3000MHz speeds are supported through overclocking, USB 3.0, SATA 6Gb/s, PCI-Express generation 3.0 support, SLI, CrossFireX support and more.

The motherboard also supports many MSI specific design implementations and features. OC Genie 4, Military Class 4 components, super ferrite chokes, Hi-C Capacitors, Dark Caps, a gaming specific port, and Audio Boost. Much of this is marketing jargon so I?ll translate; the motherboard is well built using MIL-STD-810G spec components. The game port is a PS/2 mouse/keyboard port which has the polling rate set to 1,000Hz for the fastest possible peripheral response. The audio boost feature makes use of an integrated headphone amplifier rated for 600ohm output. OC Genie 4 is an automated overclocking solution which allows you to get more performance out of your system at the push of a single button.

Main Specifications Overview:

Detailed Specifications Overview:

Packaging

The MSI Z87-GD65 GAMING motherboard comes in a red and black colored package. The box is standard fare although it does look very cool. The board arrived damage free with the following accessories: Overclocking guide, SATA cables, I/O shield, M-connectors, voltage connectors, GAMING series case badge, SLI bridge, door hanger, user guide, application user guide, quick start guide, and driver disc.

Board Layout

The MSI Z87-GD65 GAMING motherboard has an almost perfect layout. About the only complaint I have with it is the location of the onboard power and reset buttons. These are located in what I believe to be one of the worst possible locations on the motherboard PCB. If you?ve got two graphics cards installed for SLI / CrossFireX then these are almost unreachable. Generally speaking these are only used by people doing benchmarks or testing in open test benches. Occasionally I?ve used onboard buttons from the inside of a case when doing troubleshooting but that?s a rare occurrence. So while I am complaining about the button location I?m still well aware of how minor an issue this is regardless of how much it bothers me personally.

The CPU socket area is about as clean as possible. The 12 power phases are cooled by fairly large black and red heat sinks which do make use of a heat pipe. As always I?d like for the DIMM slots to be a bit further away from the CPU socket but that?s sadly not possible. Choosing your RAM and cooling hardware wisely though can avoid complications in regard to clearance easily.

There are 4 DDR3 DIMM slots supporting up to DDR3 3000MHz speeds through overclocking and a total of 32GB of RAM. These are not color coded. These are nice and out of the way of the expansion slots and allow for installation of modules despite larger graphic cards being installed. Additionally there are some V-check points next to the DIMM slots for testing purposes. You will also find the multi-BIOS switch on the left side of the DIMM slots and toward the PCB edge.

The south bridge is located in the southwest corner of the motherboard. It features a flat heat sink with a dragon motif. Directly in front of that are the 8 onboard SATA 6Gb/s ports. The ones with the red sticker are Intel ports and the bare ports are attached to the ASM1061 controller. Naturally the Intel controller supports RAID0, 1, 5, and RAID10. The ASM1061 is not a RAID controller at all.

The expansion slot area was well thought out. The motherboard supports both CrossFireX and SLI technologies. The PCI-Express configuration supports a 16x0, 8x8, or 8x4x4 configuration for the PCI-Express x16 slots. There are four PCIe x1 slots which are all PCI-Express 2.0 compliant.

The expansion slot area is packed full of ports. We?ve got 2x USB 2.0 ports, 1x PS/2 mouse and keyboard port, clear CMOS button, S/PDIF output, DVI-D, DSUB, 4x USB 3.0 ports 1x RJ-45 port, 1x HDMI port and six mini-stereo jacks which are gold plated for audio.

Source: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/07/10/msi_z87gd65_gaming_lga_1150_motherboard_review

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