The Board - A Closer Look

The MSI Z77A-GD65 GAMING departs greatly from what MSI offered in the way of esthetics in the past. The dragons on the box, as you can see above, are also on the coolers. The PCH cooler is made out of a solid chunk of metal with a pebbled texture to it. Anodized in a nice, rich red color, the dragon design itself is shaped by a black anodized metal top plate that screws into the block below. The different textures here make for a fantastic impression in person and are just another small touch that left an impression on me. Not only is a dragon found on the PCH cooler, the VRM coolers are PHYSICALLY shaped into dragon heads, open mouths ready to swallow whatever CPU you might install into the socket between them.


The FireWire support on the Z77A-GD65 GAMING is provided by the VIA VT6315N chipset pictured above. Networking is provided by a Killer Gaming Solutions E2205 controller, a new chipset on the market that provides the same features and connectivity of other chipsets before it in a much smaller package that saves on board real estate. MSI seemed very excited by this addition, and the KillerNic E2205 actually proved quite fast under my usage testing. Audio is provided by the high-end Realtek ALC898 HD Audio CODEC we've seen on these pages many times before. High-end audio- and network capabilities are an important feature to gamers that spend a lot of time gaming on their PCs, as each can prove critical to winning those online games, so it is very nice to see that MSI took the time to choose the parts used to build the MSI Z77A-GD65 GAMING wisely.


To wrap up, the board's connectivity features, the added SATA 6 Gb/s connectivity, is provided by an ASMedia ASM1061 controller I found just behind the ports themselves, while the onboard video connectivity is managed via dual Parade PC8101 TMDS controllers, one of which is pictured above. The other is hidden further under the "neck" of the dragon head heatsink.