The Board - Layout

Once I retrieved the board from its protective anti-static bag and had it on my photo table, I had to take a moment to simply enjoy the beauty of what I had there. Finished with a shiny black PCB top layer, the Z77A-GD65 GAMING really pops out to catch one's eye with its completely "blacked-out" esthetic design, with the only exception being the heatsinks over the board's chipset and voltage module. The back of the board is definitely shiny too, as you can see by the obvious light reflections, and I noticed that there was also an "MTC" sticker on the back of the board. Each of these "MTC" stickers has a number "25" written on them, so there must at least be 24 other samples out there!


The socket area of the Z77A-GD65 GAMING is clean and clear, ready for some LN2 lovin' should you want to go down that route. The rear of the socket, on the other hand, has a lot of stuff that might interfere with some backplates of aftermarket coolers around the socket backplate. It is worth mentioning that I had no issues with my CoolerMaster TPC 812 during or after the installation. I found all component locations inside the socket populated—just a small personal thing I look for on products of this nature. It is not a critical item that affects my opinion of a product, but it does disappoint me a bit to see empty component spots since that, to me, points to over-engineering, or cost-saving measures. Fortunately, neither is the case here.


For expansion slots, the MSI Z77A-GD65 GAMING drops all legacy slot support, carrying a triplet of PCIe x16 slots and a quad of PCIe x1 slots only. The DIMM slots have clips at both ends; an important feature to me since I detest DIMM slots with those clip-less bits on one end. Just feeling and hearing that "CLICK!" when you install memory makes me feel that much more comfortable, while other solutions can leave you guessing if you installed the ram correctly. Again, a small thing, but not one that MSI has not overlooked.


The bottom edge carries the normal assortment of pin headers: USB 2.0, audio, and such are all here. I found a total of five fan headers on the Z77A-GD65 GAMING board: two 4-pin PWM fan headers and three of the regular 3-pin variety.


The backplate is very simple, but has its own unique twists. The left end has accelerated USB 2.0 ports for your mouse and keyboard as well as a PS/2 keyboard/mouse port for those that have keyboards and mice that require such a connection. There's only a single pair of USB 3.0 ports, plus another pair of normal USB 2.0 ports, HDMI, DVI, and VGA ports, audio ports, a single RJ-45 LAN port, and both optical and coaxial digital audio ports. There's also a ClearCMOS button hidden between the first and second port towers. The SATA connectivity is fairly basic but sports an extra two ports in addition to the standard six driven by the Intel Z77 Express PCH.