MSI 785GM-E65 Motherboard Review

MSI 785GM-E65

Manufacturer: MSI
UK Price (as Reviewed): £80.36 (inc VAT)
US Price (as Reviewed): $94.99 (ex. Tax)

We've covered Asus, Gigabyte and ECS 785G motherboards from AMD, and now it's MSI's turn with its tasty looking and appropriately named 785GM-E65. This microATX motherboard is slightly more expensive than the competition from Asus and Gigabyte, however the appealing aesthetic design, 140W CPU support and 128MB of GDDR3 Sideport memory might give it the edge.

MSI 785GM-E65 Features:

• Support for Socket AM3 CPUs including Phenom II and Athlon II series
  
• AMD 785G Northbridge with 128MB GDDR3 Sideport graphics memory
  
• AMD SB710 southbridge
  
• Four 240-pin DDR3 memory slots supporting 1,066 and 1,333MHz DIMMs, with DDR3 1600(O.C.) overclocking support for up to 16GB in total
  
• One PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slot
  
• One PCI-Express 2.0 x1 slot
  
• Two PCI slots
  
• Realtek ALC888S 7.1 channel high-definition audio codec
  
• One Realtek RTL8111DL PCI-Express Gigabit LAN
  
• Five SATA 3Gbps and one eSATA from the SB710 supporting RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and JBOD
  
• One IDE port
  
• VIA VT6315N IEEE1394a Firewire chipset
  
• Twelve USB 2.0 ports (six rear I/O, six pin-outs)

Board Layout

As we mentioned above, aesthetically the 785GM-E65 looks fantastic - the updated black, blue and gunmetal design of MSIs motherboards this last year has really hit the right spot with many-a PC enthusiast. The board layout works well, with some right angled SATA in the bottom corner, useful pin-outs along the bottom edge and other power connectors easily accessible.

To our amazement, MSI has still insisted on including a floppy port, which takes up valuable space on this smaller PCB, pushing the ATX connector inwards and the IDE port sits outside it. As it stands the layout makes the best of the situation - but why include a floppy connector at all, MSI?