MSI Z77A-GD55 Motherboard Review

[Rob Williams]

If you're looking for a good Z77 motherboard to pair up with that shiny Ivy Bridge CPU but don't want to break the bank, MSI's Z77A-GD55 is well worth a look. Despite its modest $165 price-tag, the GD55 offers a rich feature-set, looks good, has a robust EFI and even makes overclocking easy for those who don't care for the manual route.

Read through our full look at MSI's Z77A-GD55 and then discuss it here!

 

[Big Red Machine]

Been thinking of allocating funds for an up-to-date dedicated test system (neither 890FX nor P67 are "modern," sad to say).

This looks like a suitable motherboard for that purpose.

Rob, did you try your hand at OCing with it?

 

[Rob Williams]

I had limited time with the board because I needed to move onto something else, but I did get to 4.5GHz with it. I just didn't put it under our usual battery of tests (as can be seen by the lack of us talking about it in the article). Overclocking really isn't a major concern of mine, because if your needs are modest, any board is going to support a decent, at least when it's $150+.

 

[Big Red Machine]

I had limited time with the board because I needed to move onto something else, but I did get to 4.5GHz with it. I just didn't put it under our usual battery of tests (as can be seen by the lack of us talking about it in the article). Overclocking really isn't a major concern of mine, because if your needs are modest, any board is going to support a decent, at least when it's $150+.

This is true.

On the Intel side of things (as far as I've been told, anyway - I've yet to go full-monty when OCing a SB-/IB-era chip), OCing is more dependent on the actual CPU you get. On the motherboard side, you basically just have to be concerned about the power delivery system and the cooling thereof. That's probably why both Intel and AMD have fully-unlocked CPU multipliers on their "performance-oriented" chips.

So different from the old school of doing things!

Thanks for the review!

 

[Rob Williams]

CPU is part of the equation, but again, if the needs are modest, you'd have to be unlucky to get a chip that just won't OC at all. Binning really comes into play with extreme overclockers, where even 10MHz can mean the difference between a world record or not.

 

[Optix]

*looks at his signature*

You can bet I'll be pounding away on this board when I have some vacation later in August so I'll be able to answer the whole overclocking question in more detail.