 Welcome to my unboxing and first look at the Z77A-GD65. This is MSI's first board that I've had a look at on the brand new Z77 platform from Intel. So this is using a new chipset supporting Intel third generation Core i5 and Core i7 processors on LGA 1155. So yes, 22 nanometer CPU ready, it is also SLI ready and Crossfire ready. Compatible with Windows 7, it better be and supports Intel Core series processors which it had better. Alright, PCI Express generation 3 is also supported, it should be noted of course. Of course, MSI brought this up that they were the first with a PCI Express generation 3 ready motherboard and that was on the Z68 platform as well as Virtue MVP, so a little bit more on that in a moment. It comes with a 3 year warranty in USA, Canada and Mexico, includes their 1 second overclocking OC Genie 2. OC Genie now over clocks more than just the CPU which is a very cool thing as well as ClickBios 2 which is their graphical UEFI BIOS. ClickBios 2 is 10 times better than ClickBios 1 and I would say the best UEFI implementation that I have used so far. I love ClickBios 2, it's very easy to navigate. We're gonna switch spots here. We're gonna change places. Alright, OC Genie overclock in 1 second, it probably takes less than a second actually and provides an instant performance boost to CPU, memory and integrated graphics and apparently storage device performance, cool. At least 36% boost in 3D gaming performance, that's probably assuming you're using the onboard GPU. Alright, Military Class 3, so they are using their, they're using their DRMOS 2, so this is their next generation. Their DRMOS concept was originally introduced on their P55 boards and was one of the things that drove MSI P55 boards, at least here at NCIX where I work, to be one of the most popular ones out there. So this is a next generation of that proven technology. We've also got Hi-C caps, SuperFerrite chokes as well as solid caps built into this board. Let's go ahead and open it up. Ah yes, okay, SuperCharger is awesome because you can charge your iPad, iPhone, slash mobile at high speed even when your PC is shut down, so that is even when your CPU is in the lowest possible resting state, which is powered down. Certificate of quality and stability, okay, sure. You guys won't need this, that's for me. That won't be in the retail box. Drivers and Utilities DVD, download the latest off of the MSI website. Quick installation guide, oh, this looks really big actually. Look at that, they show you all the different components with little diagrams and stuff. Handy. Software and application, exclusive user friendly feature collection, okay. So shows you how to use their various software applications. Ooh, Teaming Genie, provides traffic load balancing and redundant NIC operation if network connection fails. Cool. Aha, we have, oh neat, even on a GD65 level board we've got the little cables for measuring the voltage directly off the board as opposed to through the BIOS. That's very cool. All right, next we've got four SATA3 6 gigabit per second right angle cables and yes, based on my testing it doesn't matter that they're SATA3 but that's what they are so I'm going to call them what they are. We've also got an IO shield. Aha, flexible black SLI bridge, my very favorite kind. The user's guide, lots of accessories here guys. We've also got their M connectors which allow you to more easily connect your front panel connectors including USB 2 as well as your power switch, reset switch and all that good stuff. And finally, the board itself. I'm really looking forward to checking out this board because MSI in the last few generations has done such a good job on the aesthetics and as you guys know if you watched my video where are you standing really close to me for a reason? No, no, I don't want the shadow. So sorry about that guys, there's a bit of a miscommunication where you know I was uncomfortable because Slick was standing too close but he deemed it necessary so you know I got over it. So here we go, so we've got our LGA 1155 processor as well as all of our built in military class PWM here. You can see their military class 3 branding and this is okay. So yes the gun thing is a little bit played out but the good news is that on the MSI board you can kind of ignore it if you're looking at it from a normal angle which would be above it a little bit and at least it's tastefully implemented guys, that's all I'm saying here. So we've got blue and black anodized with silver accents heatsinks. I am definitely big into the aesthetics of my motherboards because they make a difference to how your entire system looks and these ones look really, really sharp. Alright we've got our 8 pin CPU power connector in its ideal location up at the top left. We have support for dual channel DDR3 memory. This is in line with the CPU. Remember this supports either Ivy Bridge CPUs or last generation Sandy Bridge processors so you can install any LGA 1155 processor that you want in this motherboard. You're just going to get the best performance out of a new Ivy Bridge chip. Up here we've got some LEDs. We've got our OC Genie button which I've featured in the past although we haven't tried OC Genie 2 so I'm looking forward to trying that. Also our power and reset buttons, V checkpoints for a wide variety of different motherboard components including the onboard graphics on the CPU which to my understanding can be overclocked especially since OC Genie does it, to my understanding. Our 24 pin connector is at its ideal location along the right hand edge of the board. We also have a front USB 3 header here so this is running off of the Intel USB 3. So there are 4 Intel USB 3 ports that are running directly off of the Intel chipset. Here we have the Intel SATA 3 6 gigabit per second ports which are going to be the highest performance one. We've got Intel SATA 2 3 gigabit per second ports as well as third party SATA 3 6 gigabit per second ports. Here is a little post meter so you can diagnose easily any posting issues as well as their super... just a sec. Sorry guys here's the super charger, red coded which means you can charge things faster off of this port. Here's a regular USB 2 header as well as another one. Here's our multi-bios switch so it has dual bios integrated on the board and you can easily switch between them. So this is helpful if you have a dialed in overclock and you really don't want to screw it up and then you want to try something else. You can also flash different revisions of the bios so that you can find out is the new bios you know perfect for my needs or is it not and if you don't like it you can go back to the old one just like that. Very cool. World's first PCI express gen 3 we can take that sticker off. There we are. And moving along we've got a trusted platform module, we've got some LED guys, aha there's our front panel connectors as well as our front audio so I was looking for those guys. Next we have the slot layout. So we have no legacy PCI on this board. Then to 3 PCIe 16 although I'll get into why they're not quite PCIe 16 in just a moment as well as 4 PCIe 1. So this guy runs at 16x if you put a single graphics card in up to 16x PCIe 3.0 then if you put in 2 PCI express 3.0 ready graphics cards these two are going to run at 8x and 8x. Remember PCIe 3 8x is equivalent to PCIe 2 16x so even with high end graphics cards you shouldn't get any bottlenecking as long as you're using a PCIe 3 ready CPU that is Ivy Bridge, 2 PCIe 3 ready slots and PCIe 3 ready graphics cards. This last guy right here due to bandwidth limitation so that is how many PCIe 3 lanes are running off of the CPU is recommended to only use this one if you're running an Ivy Bridge CPU. Next moving on to the back panel control or back panel IO we've got 4 USB 2.0 ports, a PS2 port which I still do like to see guys, clear CMOS switch, optical and coaxial audio out, HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet, 2 USB 3.0 ports running off the Intel chipset, VGA, DVI and 7.1 audio out. Here's another thing that you guys may or may not have seen just yet. Actually hold on a second yeah yeah here we go so you see that little oh I fell you see that little Virtue logo right there this board uses Virtue MVP which is a more flexible updated version of the original Lucid Virtue which was on the Z68 platform I think hold on. Sorry guys H67 I knew that wasn't right. So what this allows you to do is you can use your integrated GPU to do quick sync which is your quick video encoding that's running off of the graphics core on the CPU itself and with Virtue MVP you can also use your integrated CPU to boost the performance of even a high power dedicated graphics card as long as the game supports it so that's a pretty neat thing. I haven't tested this out yet though but I'm very excited to check it out. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews and other computer videos. Sorry guys I forgot the fan headers we've got one, two, three, I saw another one, three PWM fan headers as well as two three pin fan headers.