MSI Z77A-GD55 LGA 1155 Motherboard

MSI is a well known name and staple of the computer enthusiast motherboard market. MSI offers a wide range of products including, tablets, notebook computer cases, servers, graphics cards, and wireless nerworking hardware.MSI is also best known for its motherboards.
      The MSI Z77A-GD55 is a Z77 express chipset based motherboard designeed for socket LGA1155 processors. The motherboard has several MSI specific features to offer such as MSI's Military Class III design specifications, click BIOS II, and OC Genie.The more technical features of the motherboard are DrMOS II MOSFETs, Hi-c caps, solid ferrite core chokes, solid electrolytic capacitors, and active phase switching. Additional features provided by the chipset are 4 SATA II 3Gb/s ports, 2 SATA III 6Gb/s ports, PCI-Express 3.0 and 2.0 support, SLI/crossfireX support and support for USB 3.0 devices.



  
      Board Layout
             The layout of the Z77A-GD55 is good.The CPU socket is clear of any major obstructions and though the MOSFET coolers are fairly large and powerful these shouldn't pose a problem.The DIMM slots are too close but that comes with the territory on LGA1155 boards or any board which is compatible with CPUs that use an integrated memory controller.There are four DDR3 DIMM slots which are correctly color coded to indicate proper dual channel mode operation.These are free and clear of the primary PCI-Express x16 slot so installation of memory modules won't require removing the video card.

        The Z77 Express chipset is a unified chipset as a result north bridge is actually located in the area where the south bridge used to be located you can see it on some boards. It is cooled by a flat, passive heat sink which has a low enough profile to avoid expansion card clearance issues.It is also directly behind the board's 6 SATA ports, which are properly right angled for your convenience and eliminate further clearence issues.The rear I/O pael area is packed with about as many ports as it can be. It contains the following ports: 1 PS/2 keyboard or mouse port, 4 USB 2.0 ports, 2 USB 3.0 ports, 1 clear CMOS button, 1 S/PDIF out, 1 optical out, 1 HDMI port, 1 DSUB port, 1 DVI-D port and finally 6 mini-stereo jacks.

              BIOS
   MSI uses a 64Mbit Flash ROM containing an American Megatrends Inc. In the OC section we can see our current CPU and DRAM frequencies at the top along with our multiplier. The base frequency, adjust CPU ratio, adjust CPU ratio in OS, internal PLL over-voltage, EIST, Intel Turbo Boost, OC Genie control and other features are found here. There is a sub-menu for the advanced DRAM configuration but accessing it requires that you set the DRAM timing mode to "Linked" or "Unlinked". The auto mode doesn't allow for adjustments there.As we scroll down we have spread spectrum settings, CPU core Vdroop offset control, digital compensation level, CPU core voltage, CPU I/O voltage, DRAM voltage and more. Scrolling down again we have OC retry count and then additional sub-menus.


    In the advanced DRAM timing, we can choose which channel we'll be tuning and then finally get down to it. The command rate as well as the latency values are all adjusted here.There are a couple of pages of adjustment and too many to list. Another sub-menu is the overclocking profiles. From here you can save, or load a pre-defined profile. You can even save or load these to the USB devices. The CPU specification menu gives us our model number, clock speed, CPUID, microcode, ratio status, CPU ratio, cache data and the number of cores. An additional sub-menu called CPU technology support shows us what instruction sets and extensions the CPU supports. The memory-Z feature works on a per DIMM basis allowing us to view each module separately. Memory type bandwidth, brand, part and serial numbers are shown along with the SPD timing tables. Though not all the data is shown as the tables are consist of timings at various supported frequencies in the case of overclocked RAM. X.M.P timings are viewable separately from here via another sub menu shown above. The CPU features menu shows as CPU specific features such as Hyper-Threading, active processors cores, execute disable bit enable/disable, virtualization support, C1E, Intel C-state, and core ratio limits among other things. The click BIOS II is a feature rich and deep UEFI offering plenty of tweaking options.

    Sound Hardware
      The MSI Z77A-GD55 uses the Realtek ALC892 8-channel audio CODEC for its audio solution.
   The Following specifications are:
 - Chipset integrated by Realtek ALC892
 - Flexible 8-channel audio with jack sensing
 - Compliant with Azalia 1.0 spec
 - The audio sounded ok.
     The MSI Z77A-GD55 motherboard shows to truly be a value in the enthusiast segment while being priced to the lower end of the spectrum at $129.99 after $10 MIR with Free prime shipping from amazon.The MSI Z77A-GD55 motherboard overclocks with extremely well, runs cool, and shows rock solid stability.