MSI P67A-GD65 Motherboard

On-Board Peripherals

The Intel P67 chipset is a single-chip solution, and is also known as PCH (Platform Controller Hub). This chip supports two SATA-600 ports and four SATA-300 ports, supporting RAID (0, 1, 5 and 10). The manufacturer added two additional SATA-600 ports, using a Marvel 88SE9128 controller, which supports RAID 0 and 1. These two extra ports are labeled “SATA7_8” and we think the manufacturer could have a different color to identify them. All SATA ports are located on the motherboard edge, rotated 90°, so video cards won’t block them.

Figure 4: SATA-300 (black) and SATA-600 (white) ports

Additionally the P67A-GD65 has two eSATA-300 ports, controlled by a JMicron JMB362 chip.

This motherboard doesn’t come with ATA-133 or floppy disk ports.

This motherboard has 10 USB 2.0 ports, eight soldered on the rear panel and two available though one header located on the motherboard. It also has four USB 3.0 ports controlled by two NEC μPD720200 chips, two soldered on the rear panel of the motherboard and two available thru a header on the motherboard (the product comes with an I/O bracket for you to use these ports).

Two FireWire (IEEE1394) ports are available, one soldered on the motherboard rear panel and one available through a header. They are controlled by a VIA VT6308P chip.

The P65A-GD65 comes with eight-channel audio, generated by the chipset using a Realtek ALC892 codec. Unfortunately Realtek doesn’t publish technical specifications for this codec at their website. The portrayed motherboard comes with on-board optical and coaxial SPDIF connectors, and you can either route digital audio to your video card to have digital audio in the HDMI connector using the available “JSP1” header.

The analog audio jacks are completely independent, so you won’t “kill” the mic in or the line in jack when installing a set of 7.1 analog speakers.

The portrayed motherboard has one Gigabit Ethernet port, controlled by a Realtek RTL8111E chip, which are connected to the system using PCI Express x1 lanes and thus not presenting any potential performance issues.

In Figure 5, you can see the motherboard rear panel, with shared PS/2 keyboard and mouse connector, eight USB 2.0 ports, external clear CMOS button, coaxial and optical SPDIF outputs, FireWire (IEEE1394) port, two eSATA-300 ports, Gigabit Ethernet port, USB 3.0 ports (blue ones), and independent analog 7.1 audio outputs.

Figure 5: Motherboard rear panel