MSI P55-GD65 Motherboard Review :: Layout

Board

8-pin power

P55 Express chipsetRear of PCB

Rear of PCB

Starting at the upper right hand corner, we see that MSI has put a 8-pin power connector near the right edge. Some of the P55 boards have four-pin power connectors, but this one has a 8-pin connector that most PSUs have. The CPUFan header is located near the middle of the board right under the DrMOS heatsink.MSI has a heatsink covering the P55 Express chipset.

CPU Socket

CPU Area

DrMOS 1

DrMOS 2

The CPU area of the board is clear of obstacles with two rows of Solid capacitors aligning it. The LGA-1156 interface uses a similar installation method to that of the LGA-775 interface lift the lever lowers the CPU into the Socket, lower the cover and lever making sure to install the cover front under the front screw and install the CPU cooler.

DIMM Sockets

Voltage Checkpoints

IDE

Fintek chip

The DrMOS heatsink is on the right hand side of the CPU Socket. An 8mm pipe leads out to the 2nd DrMOS heatsink. MOSFETs run warm and the inclusion of a heatpipe cooling system is a definite plus on this motherboard. Below the CPU Socket are four DIMM Sockets for DDR3 memory. The Intel LGA-1156 CPUs have a dual channel memory controller and support up to DDR3-1333MHz memory. This board supports DDR3-2133MHz with overclocking.

The bottom of the board starts off with Voltage Checkpoints for the CPU, the CPU VCore, the DDR, and the PCH Voltage. To use the Voltage check points, use a multimeter at the checkpoints outlined in the manual. You choose a checkpoint for the CPU for example, and then the Ground checkpoint. To the left of that is the 24-pin ATX Power connector.

IDE connector

JMB363

SATA

CPU LED

Next is the FDD connector. To the left of the FDD connector is a sideways facing IDE connector, followed by six SATA ports, the maximum that the Intel P55 chipset supports natively. Intel’s PCH controls the SATA. There is a JMicron363 chip on the board to support the seventh SATA port on the board and the external SATA port on the Rear I/O. The IDE controller and FDD controller are also controlled by the JMB 363.

Sysfan1

Sysfan2

Sysfan3

Expansion

Expansion on the board consists of two PCI Express gen 2 x16 slot, A PCI Express gen 2 x4 slot, two PCI Express gen2 x1 slots and two PCI slots. Multiple graphics cards are supported in both SLI and Crossfire mode. As the maximum number of PCI Express lanes on the LGA-1156 CPU is 16 and the controller is on the CPU die itself, the two slots will be divided into x8 x8 mode. There is a 2-slot separation between the PCI Express x16 slots, allowing for two slot video cards to be installed easily..

FP I/O

USB

Firewire

Realtek RTL8111D

The left side of the board starts off with the FP I/O connectors, followed by three USB headers, a COM1 header, Base Clock + and – buttons, Power button, OC Genie button, SPDIF Out header, Firewire header CD In header and Audio header. There is a OC Genie chip which is the actual processor that comes into operation when the button is pushed. Two Realtek RTL8111D PHYs handle the dual LAN jacks.

ALC889a

Audio jumper

Audio driver

Audio information

Onboard sound on the board is provided by the Realtek ALC889A CODEC that has been seen on many of the P55 motherboards. This chip fully supports the High Definition Audio standard and supports Multi-Streaming up to 7.1+2 channel simultaneous output. The rear I/O on the board consist of the standard PS/2 mouse, keyboard ports, Optical Out and Coaxial Out S/PDIF connectors, 7 USB ports, two Gigabit LAN jacks, a Firewire port, a special USB/external SATA Combo port and 6 jacks for the onboard audio.

BCLK, Power, OC Genie buttons

OC Genie chip

Rear I/O

DrMOS