The Board - Layout

The MSI Z68A-GD65 (G3) sports a blue/black color scheme and a familiar layout, albeit with just six slots. It's more black than blue, but that theme continues to even the board's pin connectors, a nice small touch that goes a long way. The rear of the board is nice and clean, with very few protruding pins that might interfere with aftermarket heatsinks and liquid nitrogen pots, thanks to the Z68A-GD65 (G3)'s capacitor selection. The HI-C capacitors feature a nice low profile, that even makes insulation a relatively easy task.


Those capacitor choices translate to saved space around the socket too, of course, with plenty of room available to fit aftermarket heatsinks and insulate for extreme cooling if needed. Looking inside the socket we see an array of components all nicely lined up, and not a single space empty, but we did find several places on the backside of the socket with empty solder pads.


There are four total DIMM slots, each supporting 8 GB DIMMs, bringing memory support up to a total of 32 GB. The expansion slots start with a PCIe x1 slot up top followed by a x16 slot that will switch down to a x8 link when the second slot is populated. There is a second and third PCIe x1 slot separating the dual PCIe x16 slots, and two legacy PCI slots are below, just enough slots to meet near anyone's needs.


There are total of eight SATA ports on the Z68A-GD65 (G3), with both white ports offering SATA 6 Gb/s connectivity, while the four black ports are SATA 3 Gb/s natively. The lower white SATA 6 Gb/s ports are driven by a Marvell controller, while the other set of white ports, as well as the four black ports, are driven by the Z68 PCH (Platform Controller Hub). The backplate has a combo mouse/keyboard PS/2 port, four USB 2.0 ports, dual USB 3.0 ports, and a smattering of both audio and video ports, both in analog and digital formats. We also find a CMOS clear button, handy when overclocking and the backup BIOS fails to load.


The bottom of the board sports now-standard USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 headers, with a split front-panel connector that helps fit everything in nicely. The rear half sports ON/OFF and RESET switches, along with a serial "COM" and audio headers.


There are two other pin blocks on the MSI Z68-GD65 (G3); one TPM module block above the lower PCIe x16 slot, and "DLED" block next to 24-pin power connector, which the manual tells us is for "future expansion". There are a total of five fan headers too, with the upper two featuring PWM control, while the lower three are the standard 3-pin type.


The southbridge heatsink, located between the right edge of the PCIe x16 slots, is fairly large, but is low enough so as to not interfere with large expansion cards in any of the slots. Below the heatsink is the Z68 PCH itself, surrounded by a complex array of components.