MSI Z77A-GD65 ATX LGA1155 Z77 DDR3 3PCI-E16 4PCI-E1 SATA3 DVI HDMI VGA DX11 USB3.0 Motherboard

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This is by far the best motherboard I have ever owned (my seventeenth). I LOVE the UEFI interface and the one-button overclocking function is to die for. I popped a 3570K in here and within seconds, I am at 4.2GHz with absolutely no mucking about with voltage and RAM timings, etc.I have owned boards by every imaginable manufacturer. This board outdoes them all.

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Great motherboard for the price. Got it in a bundle with an i5 3570K, and overclocked to 4 GHz without problem. Could easily push further but that was a good number for me (Hyper 212 Plus cooler)

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OC is easy, setup was easy, although the NIC card didn't install with Window7, i had to use the DVD (which took a while to load) and grab the Intel NIC Drivers. That took a while to figure out, but this board is worth the 159 i paid.

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This was the only board that looked decent enough for a blue & black theme (this & the g45). The asus boards thou more feature packed, just had a weak theme over all. Aesthetics is a major deciding factor for some individuals

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Build: Amazing, everything is solid in place, solder points are clean and regular. The board has great caps and voltage is very stable even at high overclocks. I believe this board will either make your overclock work and stable or live at stock speeds for a very very long time.Features: Great set of features for overclockers and regular users alike, I especially like the LED boot up indicator for troubleshooting overclocks, the LEDs for power phases are very useful too and the voltage meter sockets were very useful to me.Bios: Very easy to use with the mouse, will not blind you after prolonged use as it uses colors that are easy on the eyes! The options are well organised and browsing through the menus is easy and quick.CON: The manual comes in many different languages meaning they had to cut on technical specs that I would expect to see in a manual. I count this as a con because as a board so well suited for overclockers you'd expect the manual to go beyond the basic setup steps of how to snap RAM in place. You'll have to download the full version online and even it is lacking on the technical end.Comes with the MSI brand name, including their amazing support.

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Bought this with the intent of doing HDMI capture and Gaming. Has no issue with either. Disappointing that half of the SATA ports are SATA 2 but glad to see the PCI slots were dropped completely from this board.For Firewire users you will need to purchase a Firewire bracket (does not come with one).

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This was an awesome buy at $125 during Boxing Day and after a $30 rebate, which I only received this week.After determining what specs were important to me(Z77 chipset, high quality and lots of power phases, second PCIE slot running at X8, and not X4, with two GPUs), there were a few that met these requirements from MSI, ASUS, GIGABYTE, ASROCK. The determining factor was the price at the time, as well as the nice colour scheme for the components.It took extensive reading of reviews to get more detailed information on the specs, as the information on their website is rather sparse and not detailed enough for someone making their choice based on particular specification requirements.Given the stark performance difference between USB 3.0 and 2.0, it would have been nice to have more of the former than the latter.The OC Genie II is a quick and easy way for increased performance for those not interested in the subtleties of OCing an Ivy Bridge processor.

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The specs are great for the price.

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Great motherboard, bought it during the holidays sale. Set up was quick and easy.The large heat sinks help with heat dissipation, the board never gets really hot. Very good for overclocking.The RAM slots are a bit close to the CPU socket so if you have a large after market CPU cooler, be wary as the cooler might be touching your RAM sticks heat spreader.Great board overall, no regrets in buying.

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Good Mobo, sturdy and seems well build, would like it if more boards would put at least one of the old style pci slots, as this one only has the newer pci-e, but a lot of us have older cards that are still good like the older version of the asus xonar st sound card

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I bought this mobo for about $130 during the holiday sale. So far so good. The bios settings are really helpful especially in regard to the on board video and for overclocking. Great Performance

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I Bought this MSI board beacuse it was cheaper than Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H. However, they are now the same price!I don't mind that it doesn't have a 4 USB3 no the back I/O, or eSata or whatsoever. But the Msi utility softwares are no compare to Asus or Gigabyte when they are the same price!Having that said, buy this only to satisfy the "need" not "want". This review was modfied by poster @ 12-28-12 03:15 PM

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The first board that I receiced, the Lan Would not work, (although they tested it back at NCIX and could not fine an issue). I returned the board prepaid and they cross shipped me a new one. The second board worked flawless out of the box. Very easy to setup and tons of great features. I love the push button overclock feature. I only wish that it had more usb 3.0, only 2. You can add more though. I would highy reccomend this board and I would very highly reccomend paying for the Express RMA service. Freight was prepaid both sending the board back and the cross ship board. Well worth the extra 3%

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Buy it if u want to build a mid- high end..

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I bought this board because I hate third-party SATA and USB3 controllers. This board is all Intel, with a third-party controller on sata ports 7 and 8 (just don't use these two).Runs 32GB of memory at 1600mhz paired with a 3570k at 4ghz, stock voltages. :)

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Decided on this board because it paired well with an i5 3570k cpu. This mobo's chipset (Intel Z77) is designed to work with Intel's Ivy Bridge processors. It has many great features including a great BIOS UI which makes for super easy overclocking.It looks great, performs great, and has great components. But another feature I really loved was the 8 SATA ports! It is the only Z77 mobo with 8. Since I have 1 SSD and 6 HDDs and a DVD drive, I needed this many.If you want a Z77 chipset Motherboard with outstanding performance and has easy overclocking functions and has 8 (yes 8!) sata ports then this is your board.I am very satisfied with this great MSI board!

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What a waste of time and money. My video card (MSI Twin Frozr II GTX 570) wouldn't work in the 1st x16 slot, whereas it had worked just fine in my previous mainboard. When I tried it in the 2nd x16 slot, it worked there. I moved it back and forth a couple times and the testing results were consistent. I disassembled & checked the CPU socket pins. That gave me some hope because one of them was slightly off. I tilted it into place, re-assembled & re-tested. Same result: GPU OK in 2nd x16 slot but not the 1st. I also tried flashing the BIOS, in case some compatibility issue was fixed. That also did not help. So it was a fair bit of messing around until I got to a point where I realized that there was no way on Earth I would be able to make the board work properly, and I had to RMA.When NCIX got the board & tested it, they found that some GPUs worked in the 1st x16 slot, but at least one that they tried would only work in the 2nd slot. Before they found one that only worked in the 2nd slot, it looked like they were going to send the board right back to me. That would have been a problem for me, since I couldn't use the board myself, and I also couldn't sell it (knowing that it had a flaky x16 slot). So I thought I'd be stuck with a total loss (& it may still turn out that way). I don't blame NCIX for initially thinking the board had no defect -- I blame MSI for failing at quality control. It's funny (in a sad way) that the board included a fancy certificate guaranteeing it to be of the highest quality. Maybe they should spend less money on marketing garbage and just focus on putting out well made boards.Avoid it -- unless you want the roll the dice & risk a seriously painful upgrade.

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Good board all in all. No problems and the layout is great.

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Very solid MOBO. Lots of fan connectors, nice black and blue coloring. Comes with convenient L-shape SATA cables. Only problem is no PCI slots, which I didn't check before buying, so I need to buy a new sound card. On board sound doesn't compare to my old azuntech. And the graphics card fits kinda funny (MSI 560 GTX), as in it doesn't line up properly to put the screw into your case. You really have to force it. Moreover, internet didn't work until you installed drives from the disk, as well as my GPU wasn't detected until windows installed the drivers. After I got everything running, it's still a good buy, but if you have no idea what you're doing, you might run into problems.

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At this motherboard's regular price range, some other motherboards come with legacy PCI slots, two LAN ports, extra back USB brackets, extra back eSATA ports, Bluetooth support, built-in Wi-Fi and foam packaging.Otherwise, I think this motherboard is good bang for the buck if purchased on sale. The motherboard temperatures are cooler than my Gigabyte motherboard, loads AHCI much faster, the debug LEDs are helpful, the UEFI BIOS is slick and the motherboard appears to be very stable. All my hardware was recognized on the first boot as well. I also like how the SATA controller's heat-sink is a little lower than other motherboards: this helps accommodate long graphics cards.Although the front panel connectors are in the middle of the motherboard, my ATX mid tower case's cables were just long enough with the mConnectors on.However, I noticed the RAM I installed is quite close to my CPU cooler. This may not be a problem for people using the stock Intel cooler or a liquid cooler, but larger air coolers or tall RAM coolers might be a problem.

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i was looking for a nice board to overclock a 2500k,after doing some reading i chose the msi z77a gd65, it's one one the best board , i got it for $155 after mir and pmok now time to see if i can get to 5 ghz...

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look at the cons..thats all u need to be aware of before you buy this board...

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I wanted a board with just pci-e connectors and without paying for the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi features that I'd never use. This board is built with quality components but in the event of an rma Msi has a depot in Canada. Love the aesthetics of this board!

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Definitely a good choice! Much more if you look forward to an ivy bridge processor.Try to get one in a bundle deal (That's what I did and had a pretty interesting rebate on the card + processor)

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I spent a bit of time researching boards for my new 3770k, and decided on this one. Used it with a 2600k first as well. It works great, has a real nice BIOS, overclocks well (5.2ghz on my 2600k without pushing it too hard), and looks nice. For the price, this board won't be beat.