3/02/2012 07:04:00 PM
dannzfay
With CeBIT 2012 rapidly approaching, more and more motherboard makers rush out to present their solutions based on Intel’s next-generation 7-series chipsets, including MSI, whose upcoming Z77A-GD65 board recently starred in a picture preview.
Not much has changed since our initial encounter with the MSI Z77A-GD65, so this uses the same PCB layout and low profile blue heatspreaders.
If we were to take a look under the PWN heatsinks installed by MSI, we would notice that its creation uses a 9-phase VRM design in order to feed power to the CPU, which should be more than enough for even the fastest Ivy Bridge processors.
The board’s expansion features include three PCI Express x16 slots (two of these are Gen 3.0 compliant), four PCIe x1 slots, as well as eight SATA ports.
Four of these support SATA 6Gbps transfer speeds, two driven by the Intel Z77 chipset, while the other two are controlled by a third-party chip, according to the specs sheet published by eTeknix.
As far as the PCIe x16 slots are concerned, only the first of these can work at full x16 speeds, as the second one has only eight PCIe lanes routed to it. These are however compatible with both CrossFireX and SLI setups.
Moving to the back, the connectivity options available include everything that we expect to see from a high-end Z77 motherboard, such as three video outputs (DVI, VGA, and HDMI), a Clear CMOS switch and 7.1 channel audio with S/PDIF out.
MSI has also added two USB 3.0 ports that are driven by the Intel PCH, while two more such high-speed connectors can be routed to the front of the case by connecting them to the provided on-board header.
No details regarding pricing are available at this time, but the MSI Z77A-GD65 is expected to be showcased at this year’s CeBIT fair, which will open its gates on March 6.
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