The MSI P55-G65 motherboard makes use of Intel's LGA1156 CPU socket which sustains the latest Lynnfield family of processors. Lynnfield is being supported by the Nehalem technology that was launched in Core i7 900 as well as uses the similar 45nm Penryn fabrication development.

The core of the CPU has undergone a few procedures to build it both simpler as well as cheaper, with a decrease in the included DDR3 memory controller from triple channel to dual channel, as well as it has dropped the QPI (QuickPath Interface) bus used in Nehalem in favor of a new-fangled bus called DMI (Direct Media Interface).

In one more alteration, the PCI Express graphics controller has been moved from the chipset into the CPU core, which means that the Northbridge as well as microprocessor have efficiently been combined into a sole component.

This gives motherboard producers an easier work when they are designing a Lynnfield motherboard judge against to the unique Core i7, as they only have to enclose with cool a particular chip slightly than a traditional dual chip layout.

Unluckily the designation protocol for Lynnfield is a bit muddled as the latest LGA1156 CPU appears in two comparable but unusual forms for the desktop. At launch there are three models of Lynnfield with the 2.8GHz Core i7 860 as well as 2.93GHz Core i7 870 that merge quad cores with hyper threading to current eight virtual cores, a lot like the unusual Core i7.

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The third model is the 2.66GHz Core i5 750 which messes things up as it has quad cores lacking hyper threading as well as it also loses the VT-d virtualization aspect. These Core i5 as well as Core i7 800 models include a TDP of 95W, which is significantly lesser than the members of the Core i7 900 families with their TDP of 130W.

Even though the requirement of the MSI P55-GD65 is comparable to several of the Core i7 X58 motherboards we have before seen, the layout is very much neater thanks to the sole chipset as well as the move to dual channel DDR3. The MSI sustains up to 16GB of DDR3-2133 RAM in four modules plus has dual PCI Express 2.0 graphics slots that sustain mutually ATi CrossFireX as well as Nvidia SLI. You also obtain one PCIe x1 slot, along with one PCIe x4 slot along with two regular PCI slots.

There are six SATA ports attached to the P55 chipset with RAID plus additionally there is a JMicron controller that sustains one internal SATA connector with an eSATA connector on the I/O panel. The rest of the I/O panel pursue the common outline for a finest motherboard with double PS/2 ports (OK perhaps that is becoming a touch odd these days), surround sound audio with optical as well as coaxial S/PDIF, eight USB 2.0 ports, with one Firewire, the eSATA along with dual Gigabit LAN.

There are three USB headers mid-board as well as MSI supplies a set with two USB ports in the package all along with the standard cables. There is also a header for a second Firewire port mid-board, even though you don't obtain a bracket from MSI.

The passive coolers on the DrMOS power regulation hardware seem extremely elegant in addition to be connected by a huge 8mm diameter heatpipe that MSI calls SuperPipe. Across the foot of the board there is the standard array of headers along with four micro buttons, plus this is where things get mainly remarkable.