Introduction

While at CES in January, 2010, I had the opportunity to meet with MSI and talk about their future plans, future products and present direction. As a consumer, there was a time I would only purchase motherboards manufactured by MSI, but around three and a half years ago, I started to see a decline in quality and reliability, so I rarely recommended or used MSI products all together.

About eight months ago, I received a call from MSI to review some of their products and, although skeptical, I agreed. One thing I noticed right away was the attention to detail on the products themselves and the willingness of the technicians and reps to answer my questions about the products and the curiosity of wanting to know how they may be made better. Honestly, that impressed me; more often than not, many manufacturers get a little defensive when you make suggestions on how to better their product.

Without going into a long dissertation, I will relay the answer to my CES questions. MSI has redirected their philosophy and has made a commitment to provide quality products, regardless of their price point category. You will notice that many budget and mainstream products have the same features that their enthusiast level products contain and, through customer feedback and further research, they will continue to make improvements.

The MSI P55-GD85 SATA and USB 3.0 Motherboard is one such product. The MSI P55-GD85, though not a high end enthusiast board, contains many of the features you would expect to see on its bigger brothers. The GD-85 is USB and SATA 3.0 compatible, contains the capability for a one second overclock, supports XMP memory and also includes the MSI Super- Pipe chipset cooling solution.