Layout

MSIs P67A-GD65 comes with a black PCB and blue expansion slots as well as aluminium cooling blocks which have been provided with an anthracite color. Overall this board generates a harmonic and clean impression. Furthermore MSI equipped this the P67A-GD65 with two PCI Express slots for graphics cards. Between these two slots you'll find another two PCI Express x1 slots. In case you're planning to setup a SLI or CrossFire system there is plenty of space between the slots that the ventilation of the two cards will be good.

MSI equipped their P67A-GD65 with a digital power design, whereas the CPU gets eight phases. This is enough to provide a CPU with a very stable current supply and even make high overclockings possible. Looking at the capacitors themselves you'll find Hi-c caps around the CPU socket. These come with a core made of tantalum which sustains very high temperatures and also has superb electrical conductivity.

Totally you'll find four DIMM-slots on the MSI P67A-GD65. Officially supported are DDR3 - 2133 (OC) / 1600 / 1333 / 1066 with up to 32 GByte capacity. Positioning of the DIMM-slots has been well thought which means they aren't too close to the CPU socket. Therefore there wont be too many incompatibilities between huge CPU coolers and big memory modules.

The current converters are being held at adequate temperatures via a passive heatpipe cooling solution. The southbridge got a passive cooling block which has not been integrated into the heatpipe loop. The fact that the cooling blocks around the CPU socket aren't too big makes it comfortable to install a big aircooler. We also noticed the very high manufacturing quality of the cooling blocks.