MSI 890FX-GD70-A excellent-looking CPU board

[Konrad Egan]

We have already taken a attending at AMD's new, high-end 890FX chipset with the ASRock 890FX Deluxe3, which offered an absolute four USB 3.0 ports. Let's see what MSI makes of it with its latest and greatest GD70-series gaming-oriented AM3 motherboard, the 890FX-GD70 (not to be abashed with MSI's cheaper 790FX-GD70).

So what's appropriate about this GD70? On the accouterments side, SATA 6Gb/s is natively accurate by AMD's best contempo SB850 chipset, two USB 3.0 ports are provided address of the accepted NEC controller, and concrete power, displace and ClearCMOS buttons are annihilation out of the accustomed at the aerial end.

A few beneath accepted appearance are a powered eSATA/USB combi port, a concrete overclocking punch and Green Ability button, and no beneath than bristles PCI Express x16 slots. It additionally sports bifold Gigabit Ethernet ports, which are acceptable absolutely attenuate these days.



We begin the antecedent MSI motherboard we reviewed, the GD65, to be one of the added visually adorable boards around, and we're animated to see the aggregation hasn't burst this architecture aesthetics with the GD70.

It still sports the aforementioned abundant aggregate of atramentous PCB, atramentous and dejected slots and argent heatsink cooling, now with added brownish dejected highlighting. Only the white SATA 6Gb/s ports blemish the aftereffect a tad – absolutely they could accept been done in black?

MSI's 'flat heatpipe's acquiescent cooling looks actual absorbing absolutely – there is as abundant metal on this motherboard as on any we've seen, admitting the 890FX (and the lower end GX, for that matter) do assume to charge absolutely a bit of cooling.

MSI does use a alternative of "military chic components" for ability and stability, but don't apprehend ruggedness on a akin with the Asus Sabertooth 55i TUF. While not too bad, the 890FX-GD70's included array is somewhat sub-par for a high-end product.

Essentially it hasn't afflicted abundant back aftermost year's GD65: one CrossFire bridge, two four-pin molex to SATA ability adapters, four beeline SATA cables and an EIDE cable, with some accessible pin attack adapters and a two-port USB 2.0 bracket befuddled in for acceptable measure. One adverse affinity with the ASRock 890FX Deluxe3 is that the abstracts cables do not in any way bout the board.