Gadgetory

today we're going to be unboxing the msi p67 a GD 65 so this is an LGA 1155 motherboard which means it is compatible with LGA 1155 Intel Core Series processors this is a next-generation platform compared to the last gen 1156 despite the change in socket number which actually goes down by one pin so let's have a look at what MSI has presented with presented us with four there P 67 a series of boards so first of all we have military class 2 so basically this is an improvement on the military class concept that MSI has been doing for a couple of board generations now high stability components such as being able to deliver up to 30% more power being able to last up to 10 years so that's the kind of component choices that they're making for the capacitors as well as for the chokes the entire power delivery system of their military class series components is designed to operate silently and to deliver clean power to your parts it comes with a three-year warranty in US Canada and Mexico unlike the last generation once we've got 4 USB 3.0 ports and 4 SATA 6 gigabits per second port so on the p55 intel boards we used to see 2 and 2 of each of those ok we have one second overclocking so MSI has improved their OC Genie it is now version 2 so that's their one button overclocking procedure can't really call it a procedure if it's one button can you just push the button it's very simple okay we have full support for nvidia sli technology ATI crossfire which I guess is now AMD frost fire it's Windows 7 ready and then you've also got that Intel stuff which we talked about already let's have a look at what they have to say for themselves on the back of the board we've got a bit of a reiteration of military class 2 so 8 times lifespan for these guys 30% higher current for these chokes and 10 plus years so they're saying 12 years of lifetime under full load gaming or up to 40 years in an office environment so there you go so basically by the time this motherboard dies you probably won't care I think what they're trying to say we've also got a couple other features here the instant OC so that's their control center software we've got super charger so you can charge your iPad and iPhone at high speed even when your PC is shut down that's a pretty neat feature click BIOS x 2.so applies the unified oh yeah efi bios i haven't even talked about that yet so MSI's p67 boards feature an EFI bios which means that you have support for like a mouse in the bios it's pretty much a change that I wish we'd had years ago but BIOS technology has made a huge leap with this generation of boards from MSI we just set there and wink t3 so that's their quick boot into a bare-bones OS so you can browse the internet and do a couple rudimentary things with your board without actually doing into Windows so the motherboard is the first thing we find once we open up the packaging but I'm just teasing you with that we're actually gonna look at the accessories first alright we have a multi GPU sli video link card so I guess what they mean is sli bridge we have a couple SATA 6 gigabits per second cables we have a straight one in a right angle okay next we have tape set what is this mmm this is exciting okay once I get it out of the package I'll be able to to show you guys why it's exciting finally we have USB 3.0 header or we have a USB 3.0 header implemented right on the board rather than having like a goofy internal USB 3 slot that then you run a cable to and then like run that out the back of your case so this is a header which will hopefully support front USB in the future but for now they're giving you a PCI bracket with full support for USB 3.0 SuperSpeed so two on the back panel two off of a header so glad to do that two more SATA cables one straight one right angle those are the same as the other ones I guess and then we have a molex to SATA power adapter just in case you don't have enough SATA power connectors on your board so here's the MSI M connector for easily installing your front panel switches what not there's an i/o shield which is labeled so you have a drivers and utilities disc which you should throw away and download the latest we have ooh we check nice so this board includes V checkpoint so you can use your multimeter to actually manually check down to a much better accuracy than any BIOS readings going to give you what voltage you're feeding to your components here is a quick installation guide here is a software application user guide so they show you how to use the MSI software that you might need to use like control center and last but not least the full users guide and this is the European version this is a sample board so I'm assuming you'll get a North American version with your board if you live in North America which not all of my viewers do so yeah okay not sure where I was going with that guys here we go so this is it this is the p67 a GD 65 I'm just gonna peel off these stickers one sec overclocking with OC Genie military fast - you've covered all of that so far so let's have a look at the overall layout of this board take off all the plastic and everything really love the look of this board it's got like just the right amount of shininess so I there this is actually quite reflective we'll do the finger test so you can see how reflective that is okay really like that I actually like glossy finishes on things so let's start with the CPU socket so here's your standard LGA 1155 socket okay you've got a lever arm so the cpu mounting is done in exactly the same way as LGA 1156 up in the top left corner exactly where it belongs you've got your 8 pin CPU power connector here are your MOSFETs so this is your military class MOSFETs they are cooled by one heat pipe between two separate little heat sinks okay we have a PWM cpu fan connector we have support for up to I believe it goes up to 32 gigs although please correct me in the comments if I'm wrong but I believe we do have support for up to 8 gig dims although I really can't imagine why you would need 32 gigs at this time but anyway so four slots supporting dual channel memory camera man's like getting away from from me here up here on the top right hopefully he can make his way back up here in the top right we have our V checkpoint so you can chat leave about two grounds PCH VCC CPU CPU VT t and VCC P we've got a couple more fans here here is our 24 pin power connector right where it belongs on the right-hand edge of the board and then moving down here is our storage so we have four SATA ports two of them are s are rather four of them we have four banks okay so two of the banks that is four ports are state a six gigabit per second and the other two the black ones are going to be SATA 2 that is three gigabit per second okay next we have our front panel connectors we have our OC Genie button we have built in switches for reset and power those are very handy if you're testing on an open bench like I often do we have a USB we have a camera man wants to get a better look at those okay we have us be moving over then we have firewire here's our USB 3 header so happy to see that finally integrated on a board now let's have a look at our PCIe slot layout we have three PCIe 1x slots two PCIe 16x slots and two PCI slots so I want to explain so two slots that are going to operate in dual eight X mode whereas a single slot will operate in PCIe 16x mode so this is just like p55 now bear in mind there is no measurable performance penalty for running in dual 16x mode we've also got two PCI slots so that's for any legacy devices you might have that do use PCI and I really like this slot layout because it does give you support even if you're using two dual slot cards for up to an additional one two PCIe 1x and one PCI card so Eve that oh yeah so cameraman is checking out the chipset cooler you can see there's not a whole lot to it there's actually not a whole lot to the p67 chipset almost everything is on the CPU now including the memory controller and even the PCIe Lane controller so here on the back we find a number of things we find one two three four five six seven eight that's a big number USB 2.0 ports we find two USB 3.0 ports that's a total of ten USB ports on the back panel we have eSATA dual eSATA support then we also have one of those combo ps2 ports that I'm so fond of so you can use either a keyboard or a mouse in it we have a clear CMOS switch digital audio out is supported in both flavors that is optical or coaxial we have firewire support just in case you actually own a FireWire device and we have Gigabit Ethernet we also have support for 7.1 analog audio and I think that's pretty much everything I have to say about the p67 a GD 65 thank you for checking out my unboxing and don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips a couple of points to clarify about the P 67 a GD 65 so it does have dual BIOS physical BIOS chips so that means you'd have to work things up pretty badly in order to corrupt both of those so it should be just fine the whether you're flashing your BIOS or doing whatever else and I wanted to also clarify what OC Genie 2 does so on a 8 P 67 board it still only does CPU overclocking but on an h-60 7 board it also integrates GPU boost so you can overclock the integrated graphics core on your new core processor another thing I also wanted to mention though is that OC Genie because of some of the limitations of the P 67 platform is only supported on K series unlocked processors so please guys bear that in mind if you're planning to use OC genie