The Board - Layout

The entire surface of the MSI Z87-GD65 GAMING board, except for bits of red on the heatsinks, is black. The shiny finish covers both the back and the front of the board, and it manages to do so while looking less busy than its older brother and boasting more features.


The area around the socket is pretty clear and obviously designed with insulation for extreme clocking in mind. The rear of the socket is almost completely free of anything that might interfere with aftermarket cooling backplates.


Gone are all legacy slots, and there are seven PCIe slots in total instead. Four of these are PCIe x1 in connectivity, while the other three are physical "x16" slots with varying link widths based on which slots are populated with expansion cards. The four black DIMM slots can be populated with up to 32 GB of RAM, with hints of DRR3 3000+ capability printed close-by on the board's surface.


The bottom edge of the Z87-GD65 GAMING board is a bit different than what we saw with the last GD65 iteration, with the front-panel connectors by the right edge, and there are now buttons in place of the front-panel pin-block of the Z77 GAMING board.


The front-panel USB header is just the same with, however, the nicely arranged, right-angled port ready for decent cable management. There are a total of five fan headers interspersed throughout the board. All five are 4-pin PWM-based and can be controlled from within the BIOS.


The rear I/O plate is also different, although most of the same stuff is found here. HDMI, DVI-D, and VGA make an appearance, but the four USB 3.0 ports on the Z87 connect directly to the chipset rather than using a separate controller, which simplifies the board design, allowing MSI to give you more value for your dollar.


New this time around is the inclusion of an mSATA slot between the CPU socket and the expansion slots, ready to accept both SATA 3 Gb/s and SATA 6 Gb/s drives. Populating the mSATA slot will disable the sixth Intel SATA port. Like on the PCH heatsink itself, MSI's GAMING red dragon has wrapped its tail around the board full circle. Even the sticker that shows which port gets disabled is printed in the matching color, showing that not one detail was overlooked when MSI dreamt this board up.