Gadgetory

so today we'll be having a look at a product that I've received a lot of requests to unbox this is the MSI 870 a fusion fusion military class motherboard this is for multi GPU computing and let's talk first and foremost a little bit about fusion technology it is powered by the Lucid Hydra I forget exactly what the chip is called but it's powered by a lucid Hydra chip and what that is is it's kind of like a PCI Express bridge chip but there's actual logic built into it that allows you to run not only multi-gpu with two Radeon cards or multi-gpu with two geforce cards but unlike sli and crossfire you can actually run non-matching cards and still get a performance boost and you can even run one Radeon card with one geforce card and still get a performance boost so one of the things that here we go here we go so let's sigh let's show you the relevant information while I talk about this a little bit more so there's n mode which is Nvidia only ok so you can see that there they're talking about like if you have one higher end GPU versus maybe you've got an older GPU and you want to just throw in another one to get a bit of a performance boost how much of an increase you can get there's a mode which is ATI only so you can run to ATI cards even if they don't match non-identical VGA processing any level of VGA combinations up to 33% performance boost and then there's ex mode so that means you can actually run a Rinna Dion card with a geforce card and play 3d games which is pretty far out there so in terms of other features that are msi exclusive you've got their military class that means they've got their a hi-c cap IC choke solid caps all of that good stuff for turn ability they've also got support for their OC Genie as well as core unlocking and they've gotten some full support for USB 3.0 and SATA 6 gigabits per second so it has all the little features but let's have a look at the board itself and how cool it looks and it's pretty expensive for an aim-7 da bored but these features cost money the Hydra chip costs money I'll tell you that much this is a SATA 6 gigabits per second cable rather 2 of them a molex to SATA power adapter alright next we have some SATA 3 gigabit per second cables two of them as well as a molex to SATA power adapter now please bear in mind there is no physical difference between those cables other than the color they will both work just fine regardless of yes okay so here we have the multi GPU computing technology driver then we have the regular drivers and utilities download the latest from the msi website we have a quick installation guide a manual for their control center software as well as a user guide for the 870 a fusion next we have some easy front panel connectors the M connector not to be confused with Q connector as well as an i/o shield then we have cameraman wants to see something over there not sure why and you can see they're using Wow very secure packaging look at that you've got like a half inch of cardboard around this board on every side they really don't want these things to break and shipping I'll tell you that much alright here it is the 870 a fusion so here it is a sticker for Auto overclocking OC Genie as well as a sticker for military class long lifetime higher stability better overclocking this is all good stuff and let's have a look at the overall physical layout of the board this is a very unique looking board and partly due to the unique branding on it so you can see right there is the MS IDE multi GPU computing that's an X if I guess presumably for X mode which is when you're running Nvidia and ATI cards together if you weren't paying attention earlier now let's yeah let's do the overall layout ok so we've got our 8 pin power connector up in the top left and it's ideal location you can see the PWM is covered by a fairly small heatsink but given that they are using military class components which do run cooler according to MSI's marketing materials that should be all that's necessary we've got our a m3 CPU socket so you've got full support for all the latest AMD processors including their six cores and that means that you also have support for dual channel ddr3 up to 16 gigs of ram can be inserted into these slots over here on the right you're 24 pin power connectors in its ideal location along the right-hand edge of the board and then you can see that down a little bit further we've got all of our SATA ports so the black ones are gonna be say two to three gigabit per second and these white ones right here are gonna be say 2 3 6 and gigabit per second the South Bridge right here is covered by a little heatsink that's probably not doing a whole lot and then under years where the magic happens though there's your North Bridge as well as the Lucid hydrogen so I believe so actually I'm not 100% sure that the hydrogen shifts under there but I'm like 99% sure that it's down there somewhere I can't verify it one way or the other in terms of expansion slots we have 2 PCIe 16x slots and while I wish I could say it was as simple as these are sli ready or they're crossfire ready or they're not ready for anything these are ready for any number of different things now the 878 chipset natively supports crossfire so I'd imagine you can run them in regular crossfire mode or you can take advantage of that lucid Hydra fusion technology that is integrated into this board other expansion slots include 2 PCIe 1x slots 1 PCI slot and then you've got support for a whole bunch of one two up to four front USB connectors front firewire as well as front audio right there you have one auxiliary PCIe 6 pin connector so I guess if you're plugging in a couple really beefy GPUs you'd want to go ahead and populate that and then here you have an internal USB 3.0 port this is smart because since most case manufacturers are implementing USB 3.0 with just an internal USB connector boom just plug it in there and you're done so instead of running over like most of them they're making you route a cable around the back out back of the board out the back of the case and then into the back of the motherboard on the i/o panel but MSI is saving you the trouble here on the back we've got two ps2 ports one Mouse one keyboard a clear CMOS switch I love this this is one of my personal favorite features I love it and then we've also got six USB 2.0 ports digital audio out in optical as well as coaxial flavours firewire Gigabit Ethernet one USB 3.0 port remember the other one is there's a bug on the motherboard box and the camera man's gotten distracted mm-hmm remember the other USB 3.0 port is inside for connection to front USB then we have 7.1 audio out and not a whole lot to talk about on the back of the motherboard although I can probably verify I'm not gonna take that sticker off okay I could check the traces here I'd be able to verify if the Hydra chips down there I believe it is though yeah thank you for checking out my unboxing of the 870 a fusion from NSI