 Today we're going to be unboxing the MSI P67A GD65. 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 for their P67A 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 the US, Canada and Mexico. Unlike the last generation ones we've got four USB 3.0 ports and four SATA 6 gigabit per second ports. So on the P55 Intel boards we used to see two and two of each of those. Okay 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? 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 Crossfire. 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 is I think what they're trying to say. We've also got a couple other features here. 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 times 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. And Winky 3 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 booting 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 going to 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 gigabit per second cables we have a straight one and a right angle. Okay next we have... what is this? Oh this is exciting. Okay once I get it out of the package I'll be able 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 super speed so two on the back panel two off of a header. So glad to see 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 and whatnot. Here's an I.O. shield which is labeled. We have a drivers and utilities disc which you should throw away and download the latest. We have V-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's 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 that was yeah okay I'm not sure where I was going with that guys. Here we go so this is it this is the P67A GD65 I'm just gonna peel off these stickers one sec overclocking with OC Genie, military class 2 we've covered all of that so far so let's have a look at the overall layout of this board just 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 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 DIMMs although I really can't imagine why you would need 32 gigs at this time but anyway so four slots supporting dual channel memory the cameraman's like getting away from from me here up here in the top right hopefully he can make his way back up here in the top right we have our V checkpoint so you can see that you've got two grounds PCH VCC CPU CPU VTT and VCCP 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 rather four of them we have four banks okay so two of the banks that is four ports are SATA six gigabit per second and the other two the black ones are going to be SATA two 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 USB we have cameraman wants to get a better look at those okay we have USB 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 is going to operate in dual 8x 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 that's oh yeah so cameraman's 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 so that's a total of 10 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 gd65 thank you for checking out my unboxing and don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips a couple points to clarify about the p67 a gd65 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 whether you're flashing your bios or doing whatever else and I wanted to also clarify what OC Genie 2 does so on a p67 board it still only does CPU overclocking but on an h67 board it also integrates GPU boost so you can over clock 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 p67 platform is only supported on k-series unlocked processors so please guys bear that in mind if you're planning to use OC Genie