MSI P55-GD80 CPU board

[Obert Paschal]

The MSI P55-GD80 Computer CPU board supports mainstream Intel Core i5/i7 processors that utilize the Intel LGA1156 socket. It run in line with what we expected, offers the characteristics you had look and few more pleasantly surprising additionals.

The CPU board has a complete - ATX form element to permit for a more spacious layout of on board links. This one arrives in black, different MSI's common favorite colour (red). The thermals are well assuming care of, with a heat-sink for the south-bridge and heat-pipe cooling approximately the processor socket.

LED activity indicants are present complete over, including even a small LED display to demonstrate error number or processor temperature, and another LED to show the number of power phases. Memory is good furnished for - 1 PATA and 6 SATA slots at the side, 2 extra SATA slots, and 1 e-SATA slots at the back. The MSI P55-GD80 board has 4 DDR3 RAM ports since the P55 chipset just supports double-channel storage, and supports velocity upto 2133 MHz.



MSI has too tested to go all-out on this board and add three PCI-Express 2.0 ports, supporting together ATI CrossFireX and NVIDIA SLI. We say "tried" because the P55 chipset has a restriction - directing one card will furnish a lane of x16 velocities, situating 2 will furnish x8 to every card, and situating 3 will furnish x8/x8/x4 respectively.

This limitation will soon start to matter with newer graphic boards that make utilize of the higher bandwidth.The back panel has rather an assortment of input/output slots -Seven Universal Serial Bus, two PS/2, two S/PDIF, 6 audio slots for 7.1 channel audio, 2 Gigabit LAN slots, an e-SATA and FireWire 400Mbps slot.

Extra headers add a FireWire and 3 more Universal Serial Bus headers. The GD80's touch panel creates it helpful for enthusiasts, you can switch it on/off and readjust exactly. Extra keys on the CPU board are the "Clear CMOS", "Base Clock" and "OC Genie".You can exactly gain or reduction the system's FSB to overclock when the system is in operation, utilizing the "Base Clock" plus and minus keys on the board.

The OC Genie keys needs a restart to assume effect, but it furnished excellent solution through overclocking our Core i7 870 processor from 2.93 GHz to 3.98 GHz (an FSB and multiplier of 210MHz x 19 respectively) and still kept the system stable.