Turning to the I/O panel, we find surround sound audio with optical and coaxial S/PDIF, eight USB 2.0 ports, one Firewire, an eSata and two Gigabit Ethernet ports. There are three USB headers mid-board, and MSI supplies a bracket with two USB ports in the package.
A neat board
In many respects, that's all par for the course, but MSI has added a couple of extra wrinkles. For one thing, the four memory slots support DDR 3 memory up to 2133MHz which looks good on the specification but doesn’t have a huge effect on performance.
The Intel DP55KG also supports fast DDR 3 and we used that motherboard to overclock our Kingston Ram to 2033MHz which added an extra 10GB/s to the memory bandwidth. That’s a huge amount of bandwidth, but it doesn’t have a noticeable effect on performance.
On-the-fly overclocking buttons
The feature that sets the P55-GD65 apart from the competition is the row of four micro buttons at the foot of the board. One is for power and two allow you to adjust the base clock speed while the motherboard is running. It’s the fourth button, labelled 'OC Genie', that adds the magic. It offers the simplest method of overclocking that we have ever seen.
Turn off the PC, press the OC Genie button, turn on the PC, wait a couple of seconds and your PC will start at an overclocked speed. In the case of our 2.93GHz Core i7 870 OC Genie raised the speed to 3.98GHz and the system was rock solid with no work on our part, which makes the MSI P55-GD65 a winner as far as we are concerned.
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COMMENTS
Foxconn sockets
Something to bear in mind if you're planning on serious overclocking is that all of these mobos use Foxconn sockets - dodgy pin contact and risk of burning up your shiny new i7.
On the plus side, all of the new Gigabyte P55A boards use Lotes sockets. DFI are also going Lotes exclusively, and EVGA have said they'll replace anything that burns up. On the other hand, Asus have said socket burn is excluded under their warranty (and deny condoning overclocking). MSI boards are actually built by Foxconn, so no luck their either.
Bone to pick
What is it with every tech review site and their failure to include warranty data? Before I purchase anything, I want to see what faith the manufacturer places in its product. On that note, perhaps you would include a review of an EVGA board next time? (10 year warranty: putting their money where their mouths are)
ASUS seems to limp on chipset cooling
That Asus chipset cooler seems pretty marginal, which fits in with my experience. The last couple MBs had huge northbridge heatsinks and tiny southbridge ones, so the southbridge was like grabbing a lit lightbulb, where the northbridge & CPU were fine. I had to buy my own southbridge cooler.
I'll take the huge ugly heatpipe setups for 100, Bob!
RE: Cooling
Hi Leo
As if watercooling ever had anything to do with merit over expense/complication :-) Generally speaking it's put on there for bragging rights, a strive for absolute silence, overclocking beyond sane levels and a case of more money than sense!
When you're doing it properly, there can be no fans involved at all - external radiators (Zalman Reserator series), full heatsinks for CPU & GPU, so no residual airflow from graphics cards either.
Just waiting for this nutter's idea to become standardised - watercooled PSUs:
http://www.overclock.net/other-hardware-mods/59036-water-cooled-psu.html
Insurance claim just waiting to happen!
Intel DP55KG Bluetooth
I didn't mention Bluetooth on the Intel board for a nmber of reasons.
1) The word count on each review is very tight so I stuck to what I considered to be the highlights and I am baffled by the appeal of a wireless technology on a desktop PC. For the record the DP55KG also has infra-red.
2) The antenna for the Bluetooth radio is a horrid fiddly thing that clips into place and then attaches inside your PC case using double sided tape.
3) There are no dedicated Intel drivers for the Bluetooth and you rely on Microsoft for the installation. In my opinion this is never ideal.
4) The Bluetooth doesn't appear to work. Or at least my phone cannot see it which boils down to the same thing. as there is no software on the PC and no way to configure the device. The drivers simply say 'Bluetooth' so I have no idea whether it is working but not broadcasting publicly or broken or what. As the drivers are Microsoft I shall wait for Rev. 3 and see if it bursts into life.
