The MSI P55-GD85 Motherboard

The MSI P55-GD85 comes packed in an orange and white box with system support logos and the Extreme Speed logo on the front. On the back, the various features and new technologies are displayed for the motherboard, including OC Genie, USB and SATA 3.0, and Dr. MOS technology. Inside, the various accessories and components are packed on the top with the motherboard packaged at the bottom in an anti-static bag.

The P55-GD85 is fairly different than traditional Intel motherboards, in that the large north bridge and heat sink is now absent from the 1156 motherboards. This has reduced the overall weight considerably and the dimensions have even shrunk slightly. The layout is quite straight forward with everything in the typical locations, with the exception being the lack of the aforementioned north bridge and heatsink.

The P55-GD85 motherboard utilizes the 1156 socket for the Intel Core i7/i5/i3  chips, which utilize dual channel DDR 3 memory. Four DIMM slots are provided for the DDR 3 memory. There is a 24 pin power input and connector for a multimeter to diagnose voltages.

There are six SATA 2.0 slots as well as two SATA 3.0 (White) and one JMicron (Blue). At the bottom og the motherboard are connections for external USB and FireWire. OCGenie and Direct OC are set to the right. Also included are two PCI- 2.0 slots  (1 X 16 and 1X 8), two PCI slots and two PCI-e 1X slots.