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MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming Motherboard Review

Henry Butt April 17, 2013 Featured Announcement, Motherboard

BIOS

MSI_SnapShot

MSI have designed an attractive UEFI interface which quite different to those we've seen from the likes of Asus and Gigabyte.  Some of the key settings like boot order are located along a bar at the top for easy access and are present throughout all of the other menus.

MSI_SnapShot_00 copyMSI_SnapShot_01 copy

The settings tab contains the majority of the non-overclocking related settings.

MSI_SnapShot_02 copyMSI_SnapShot_03 copy

Under the ‘OC' tab we find all of the overclocking options.  Everything we could possibly ask for is located here.

MSI_SnapShot_04 copy

The ‘Eco' tab contains a few basic settings which can be adjusted to improve power consumption.  The ‘Browser' tab features a web browser but this needs to be installed onto the hard drive using the supplied software CD.

MSI_SnapShot_05 copy

Under the ‘Utilities' tab we find a live BIOS update utility, a USB BIOS flashing uility and a HDD backup utility

MSI_SnapShot_06 copy

Finally, under the ‘Security' tab, we find options for chassis intrusion and an administrator password.

Overclocking

For our tests we overclocked our Intel Core i7-3770K to 4.8 GHz by bumping the multiplier up to 48x and leaving the baseclock at 100 MHz.  To achieve this speed, we only had to bump the CPU core voltage slightly to 1.35V.  We found that overclocking further than this required us to increase the voltage considerably, resulting in much higher temperatures.  While this doesn't pose an issue in the short term, it could reduce the lifespan of the system.

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3 comments

  1. Union Jack
    April 17, 2013 at 9:32 am

    Awesome, great photos too Henry, really enjoyed that read. ordering one today as I am not moving to haswell this generation.

  2. Hank
    April 17, 2013 at 9:33 am

    Well that is a beautiful design, I love the dragon engraved into the heatsink. excellent power delivery potential. Price point is quite competitive, considering the big foot networking adds a lot of the cost.

  3. Felix English
    April 17, 2013 at 9:35 am

    MSI bioses are solid, I always buy them. I am waiting on haswell and their high end board for the 4770k.

    Good product though, just at the end of a life cycle which might stop sales a little. Haswell is due in a few months.

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