MSI Z77A-GD65

MonsterMoshi

MonsterMoshi

MonsterMoshi

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Ok, so today i received an email confirming that I was entitled to £25 cashback on the MSI Z77A-GD65 motherboard.
I was always planning to upgrade my dated system once Ivybridge was launched. It needs to be Mid-high-ish spec and easily capable for latest games as well as fairly simple 3D engineering design and rendering. Also i'm on a budget so I will be getting the i5 3570K, equivalent to the 2500K apparently? It will be overclocked and water cooled in a custom case i will be making eventually.

So the question is weather this motherboard is worth the £125 i will be ultimately paying or it it worth spending on a different board.
I hear very good things about MSI so i am tempted to get this one, good choice?
 
For £125 it is a pretty sweet deal.

The GD65 series boards have always been very nice (I have personally used the P55 and P67 versions) and it looks like the Z77 version is also of good quality.
 
I have the MSI Z68A-GD65 that was a good motherboard.

In terms of overclocking, one level of Load Line Calibration and no DVID/Offset compared to other brand motherboards, it's the only reason I haven't chose MSI for Z77.
 
I'm going to go on the basis that as i don't know what those things are then i probably don't need them.
I think this is the best looking board of the ones available right now too. Which for me is very important as it will be on show when i build my new case :D
 
MonsterMoshi said:
I'm going to go on the basis that as i don't know what those things are then i probably don't need them.
Click to expand...
Very true, if you have never used these features before or don't know what they are, their isn't much point - for LLC in the BIOS just set Vdroop Control to Low Vdroop if and when you overclock. :)
MonsterMoshi said:
I think this is the best looking board of the ones available right now too. Which for me is very important as it will be on show when i build my new case :D
Click to expand...

I totally agree with you there as well, the MSI Z77A-GD65 is the best looking board out of all of them I guess, the last time I saw my motherboard was when I installed it, so no big deal for me, can be as ugly or sexy as it wants. :p
 
I've been looking at the MSI Z77A-GD65 and on a PCI expansion basis if you were to have two GPU's in Crossfire or SLI as appropriate, it would seem the GD55 offers one more available expansion slot?

Does the GD65 have a better power phase design than the GD55?
 
it looks a solid board but I hate to say it Asrock/Asus/Giga boards seem to offer more features especially with ssd caching/cache speeding up, but its interesting if it does really work, and prices for those boards are £25-50 more only....
 
I fail to see the need for cacheing for the majority of people.
If your going to have a SSD, then you might as well get a higher capacity one and use it entirely for windows and programs rather than a small one in conjunction with a HDD to only see a comparatively small increase in performance.
Most of my large data are films, pictures and music and they don't need any speed.
 
I believe SRT (SSD caching) is a standard feature of the Z77 chipset - so all Z77 board (including the MSI ones) do offer this feature, even if it isn't prominetly advertised (most likely because as MonsterMoshi says, most people would rather have an SSD as a primary drive - especially with prices of SSDs steadily dropping).
 
If you dont need ssd cashing then the Z75 boards will do and if you only need a single gpu slot then choose the H77 boards. Both will overclock k series cpus


http://www.behardware.com/news/11497/chipsets-intel-z77-z75-h77-express.html

While just checking to confirm about overclocking the h77 boards there seems to be contradictary articles saying that it wont allow overclocking. I wonder if somone could clear this confusion.

http://www.anandtech.com/Show/Index...ef-look-at-some-upcoming-7series-motherboards
 
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mickyflinn said:
If you dont need ssd cashing then the Z75 boards will do and if you only need a single gpu slot then choose the H77 boards. Both will overclock k series cpus


http://www.behardware.com/news/11497/chipsets-intel-z77-z75-h77-express.html
Click to expand...

With the Z75, absolutely - they look like good boards and hopefully if prices are low enough then it will make the s1155 platform affordable for even budget gamers.

However, I believe you are incorrect about H77 boards overclocking K series CPUs. Looking at this (and all other literature I can find) the H77 series will only allow CPU overclocking using the BCLK (not a good way of overclocking these CPUs) and increasing the CPU multiplier above the default maximum is not possible for them.
 
if anyone wants my cashback code I just "won" then pm me.

first come first served.

<code gone>
 
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mickyflinn said:
Just looked at the Asrock H77 Pro4-M and it says that, In Overclocking, you are allowed to adjust the CPU frequency, ratio and some voltages for optimal system performance.

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=H77 Pro4-M
Click to expand...

Yes, you can change the CPU multiplier with one of these boards. (just like you can with a H67 board), however it will be locked so you can't increase it above the default maximum. Boards like the z77 and z75 allow you to increase it beyond this default level if you are using a k series CPU.
 
Looks like MSI have added more levels of Load Line Calibration with the MSI Z77A-GD65, on the screenshot below it says Vdroop Control [Level 7]

On the MSI Z68A-GD65 their is only one level - 'Low Vdroop'.

msiz77agd65.jpg
 
I believe the GD55 is the ATX model where the Intel SRT begins to be included, the GD45 for instance doesn't have it. Page 2 of the above review also includes a nice slide of Z77 chipset features, and the areas which are optional technologies.
 
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