MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming LGA 1155 Motherboard Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming LGA 1155 Motherboard Review - MSI enters the "gaming" motherboard market segment, albeit a lot later than many of its competitors. The GD65 series of motherboards from MSI has been a longtime favorite of ours and are easily some of the best motherboards that MSI has produced in the last few years. Does the GD-65 Gaming live up to the legacy of the GD-65 moniker?
 
This looks like a pretty good choice when you factor in the deal on newegg that you brought up in the conclusion.

As always a very nice review. Straight to the point.:D
 
I've made a mistake buying a MSI (AMD FM2) board based on very positive reviews here. They are way behind Asus and Gigabyte, probably Asrock too. No voltage offset, no undervolting posibilities, massive vdroop w/o compensation options, poor fan control, no GPU voltage, GPU OC only with fixed max frequency, several more options missing..., no easy BIOS upgrade to the latest version (requires DOS boot disk, but then doesn't work in it either). The only positive thing is the DVI+HDMI support which others lack, but that's about it.
 
Gaming in the product title... Now I can't buy the product purely on principle...
 
I know this isn't directly related, but why don't you like Newegg? Bad experiences? I've actually never had a single issue and I've used them for home and work for years. Strange...
 
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byusinger84 said:
I know this isn't directly related, but why don't you like Newegg? Bad experiences? I've actually never had a single issue and I've used them for home and work for years. Strange...
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Newegg cut HardOCP and HardForum off its commission sales program late last year without warning right before Thanksgiving sales stating that it did not want to invest the money in our core readership. That was our major revenue stream for the forum.

Commissioned sales here (when you click on an etailer link and buy something we get a very small commission) is what keep the HardForum lean and mean without all the different forms of advertising you see elsewhere.
 
Newegg had this mobo for $139 for a brief moment. Probably till they realized that they made a mistake then changed it back to $179. Had I not already had the non gaming version of this mobo I would have jumped all over it.
 
Rob94hawk said:
Had I not already had the non gaming version of this mobo I would have jumped all over it.
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Why? The non gaming board kicks major ass, hands down one of the best boards I have ever owned. Got mine using the MC bundle, later it went on sale for even less, so got more money back.
 
WaTaGuMp said:
Why? The non gaming board kicks major ass, hands down one of the best boards I have ever owned. Got mine using the MC bundle, later it went on sale for even less, so got more money back.
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This is good to know. This'll be my first MSI mobo. All of my others are Gigabyte. I got my MSI board bundled with 8 GB Team Vulcan DDR3 1600.
 
Rob94hawk said:
This is good to know. This'll be my first MSI mobo. All of my others are Gigabyte. I got my MSI board bundled with 8 GB Team Vulcan DDR3 1600.
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This is my first MSI anything. I have always been an Asus fan, still am. Last MB was a Gigabyte, also liked that one. This new build had 2 bad MB's and both were the Asrock Z77 Extreme 4. This thing is just a simple board to use, OC was cake, layout is excellent, bios flash was easy as can be etc etc, it trumps the Asrock in every way IMHO.
 
WaTaGuMp said:
This is my first MSI anything. I have always been an Asus fan, still am. Last MB was a Gigabyte, also liked that one. This new build had 2 bad MB's and both were the Asrock Z77 Extreme 4. This thing is just a simple board to use, OC was cake, layout is excellent, bios flash was easy as can be etc etc, it trumps the Asrock in every way IMHO.
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I see you have the Swiftech H220 too. How are your cpu temps at load?
 
Rob94hawk said:
I see you have the Swiftech H220 too. How are your cpu temps at load?
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Depends on my room temp, could be high 60's to low 70's. This is from Prime testing, not sure during gaming. I also changed from the stock fans to Noctua NF-F12's, all my fans run off the controller my case came with.
 
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I got this board the other week in a 3570k combo from the egg, i like it a lot, very stable.
It doesn't ooze features like my Asus MvE or GB Sniper, but if you want a z77 board without a million bells and whistles it's very good.
 
nightwalker said:
I got this board the other week in a 3570k combo from the egg, i like it a lot, very stable.
It doesn't ooze features like my Asus MvE or GB Sniper, but if you want a z77 board without a million bells and whistles it's very good.
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Indeed it is. This is one of the best boards I've seen from MSI in the last year. Though the MSI Big Bang XPower II is still probably my favorite MSI board of all time.
 
Nice review - as per usual, wd!!! Had to look twice, the board is very ROG looking at a quick glance - red and black looks very good, no matter who uses it. Not surprised the board was a good 'gamer' in b/marks. MSI are very good @wringing every bit out of h/ware, we have seen them do this before. Could it be that leaving a lot of the 'bells and whistles' off helps with overall stability? The RE boards have a bios setting that turns off all 'bells and whistles' for overclocking, seems MSI already knew this...
 
ivansoze1 said:
Nice review - as per usual, wd!!! Had to look twice, the board is very ROG looking at a quick glance - red and black looks very good, no matter who uses it. Not surprised the board was a good 'gamer' in b/marks. MSI are very good @wringing every bit out of h/ware, we have seen them do this before. Could it be that leaving a lot of the 'bells and whistles' off helps with overall stability? The RE boards have a bios setting that turns off all 'bells and whistles' for overclocking, seems MSI already knew this...
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The MSI Big Bang XPower II was stable and packed with features. This board is "stripped" because it's targeted at a specific price point that mandates a streamlined feature set to save costs.
 
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