The Board - Layout

MSI has re-tuned the esthetic design of the GAMING line-up, providing what I find to be a more sophisticated look with hints of red and silver, while the majority of the board itself is all-black. Front and rear are covered in a nice matte-black paint rather than the brown color MSI used before, which many users, myself included, did not like.


The front of the socket is open, with a couple of red dragon claws reaching up from the board's surface to grab the VRM coolers and hold them in place. The rear of the socket is ready and waiting for your after-market backplate.


The MSI GAMING 5's slot arrangement is pretty basic, with three PCIe 3.0 x16 slots and four PCIe 2.0 x1 slots. There are four DIMM slots that are capable of pushing DIMMs to 3200 MHz and beyond.


The board's bottom edge is full of the usual stuff: USB, audio, and case-wiring headers are all present, as is the plug the Audio Boost cable attaches to. There are five 4-pin PWM fan headers on the MSI GAMING 5. These headers come with full controls in both the BIOS and via software in your Windows-based OS.


The rear I/O towers carry HDMI, DVI, and VGA video ports, with just a single LAN port and an audio tower being the only other things aside from a TON of USB ports and a PS/2 port. The USB ports under the red PS/2 port are high-speed GAMING ports for your GAMING mouse or keyboard, while the blue USB ports under the LAN header are to provide extra power to USB audio devices. There are six SATA 6 Gb/s ports on the MSI GAMING 5, and the front-panel USB header is situated just above its SATA ports.