 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 870A 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 show you the relevant information while I talk about this a little bit more. So there's N mode, which is Nvidia only. Okay, so you can see that 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 two 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 X mode. So that means you can actually run a Radeon 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 Hi-C cap, iC choke, solid caps, all of that good stuff for durability. They've also got support for their OC Genie, as well as core unlocking, and they've got some full support for USB 3.0 and SATA 6 gigabit per second. So it has all the latest features, but let's have a look at the board itself and see how cool it looks. It is pretty expensive for an 870A board, but these features cost money. The Hydra chip costs money, I'll tell you that much. This is a SATA 6 gigabit per second cable, rather two of them, a Molex 2 SATA power adapter. Alright, next we have some SATA 3 gigabit per second cables, two of them, as well as a Molex 2 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 870A 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, I'm not sure why, wants to see the M connector. Okay, he didn't get a good look at that in the first place. So I'm gonna start unboxing the motherboard while cameraman zooms in on his there, enough of that. M connector, 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 in shipping, I'll tell you that much. Alright. Here it is, the 870A 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 MSI Multi GPU computing, that's an X, 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. Okay, so we've got our 8-pin power connector up in the top left in its 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 AM3 CPU socket, so you've got full support for all the latest AMD processors, including their 6 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. Your 24-pin power connector is 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 going to be SATA 2, 3 gigabit per second, and these white ones right here are going to be SATA 3, 6 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 here is where the magic happens, though. There's your north bridge, as well as the Lucid Hydra chip. So I believe so, actually. I'm not 100% sure that the Hydra chip's 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 two 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 870A 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 two PCIe 1x slots, one PCI slot, and then you've got support for a whole bunch of 1, 2, up to 4 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 a route, like, most of them they're making you route a cable around the back, out the 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's 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 favourite 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 cameraman's gotten distracted. 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... Oh, I'm not gonna take that sticker off. Okay, if I could check the traces here, I'd be able to verify if the Hydra chip's down there. I believe it is though, yeah. Thank you for checking out my unboxing of the 870A Fusion from MSI.