I'm in love. Really, it's hard for me to convey how I feel about the MSI Z77A-GD65 GAMING. This Dragon has in a way put me under its spell, and I am, in all honesty, not sure why. With the board sitting here next to me, the Dragons of the VRM cooler looking ready to eat my poor 3770K for a snack, the MSI Z77A-GD65 GAMING board presents a well-thought-out package with a highly polished design that really puts to shame quite a few boards I've had on my desk in what has been nearly a year since Ivy Bridge first hit the retail market. From the simple, yet complex heatsink design to the new BIOS and its gaming-optimized performance, the MSI Z77A-GD65 is nearly the perfect solution for the base of a high-end gaming platform with one or two GPUs. There's not too much here, but nor is there too little.

When I first got my hands on MSI's shipment, the box, the contents, the board itself, the minor details, they all impressed me. I tried various memory kits I have here and ran into few issues, but some of them might still upset some users aiming for high overclocks with expensive DIMMs, although this is true with any currently available board, as high-end memory support really boils down to the end user's ability to adjust timings or having a ready BIOS with those options, and the MSI Z77A-GD65 GAMING's BIOS has most if not all of those options. With this board, high-end memory support isn't simply "plug and play" as it could be, as we've seen with the MSI Z77 MPower. CPU Turbo performance seemed a bit low too, but both of those issues are easily fixed with a BIOS update, should MSI offer one. As it stands right now, there are clear and concise differences with what MSI offers through the Z77A-GD65 GAMING board: It is not a top overclocker, but is ready to give top-level gaming performance right out of the box as a gaming-oriented board with, first and foremost, gaming-oriented performance. Who would have ever thought that possible? From where I sit, that's actually a pretty rare thing, and considering a good part of enthusiasts are enthusiasts thanks to gaming, this is a niche in the market that hasn't received enough direct attention in quite some time.

Although the MSI Z77 MPower board left its own positive impression on me, I found finding parts on the local market that matched the yellow esthetic rather hard, with just a few video cards and memory kits in colors that would match thematically customized gaming PC builds. That has completely changed with the MSI Z77A-GD65 GAMING: A truly sleek dragon from the tip of its tail all the way to its gleaming teeth, it is clad in utterly common red and black colors countless parts from cases and PSUs to VGAs and memory come in, and although red and black is a common combination, MSI managed to pull it off with a completely unique twist found nowhere else. I must tip my hat to MSI here, since the Z77A-GD65 GAMING really hits the mark. Just picked up a board and need help setting it up? Let me know through the forums!