MSI Z68A GD65 G3 Review

Test Setup

MSI Z68A-GD65 G3
Intel Core i5-2500K
4GB Kingston Genesis 2133MHz
EVGA GTX570
ForceWare 285.27
Be Quiet Dark Power Pro
Samsung Spinpoint F1
Corsair 80GB SSD as Intel Rapid Storage Technology cache
Thermalright Silver Arrow
Windows 7 x64

Overclocking

The MSI Z68A-GD65 G3 proved to be a tough nut to nail down a decent overclock initially. We’ve so much experience with our particular chip that we know roughly what it will reach and how much Vcore you need to get there, yet the GD65 proved stubborn at getting it past 4.5GHz initially. It quickly became apparent that it requires and responds to a decent bump in voltages and one that hurdle was overcome we reached a pretty great 4.9 GHz. Just shy of the best we’ve achieved with our processor (5GHz on a Sabertooth).

  

Sadly even with such a hefty Vcore it wasn’t stable and even dropping to 4.8GHz we saw lockups in some tests. Thankfully 4.7GHz proved bulletproof and it was with this setting that we headed off to do our testing.