MSI B85M Gaming Motherboard Review

The MSI B85M Gaming is a Micro ATX motherboard featuring a dark PCB and is accented by red along the heatsinks.  The PCB is quite glossy and devoid of excess surface components.  

Expansion slots are completely black and spaced to support a triple slot graphics card.

Flipping a motherboard over can tell you a lot about its construction.  Here we can see that the back of the motherboard is virtually devoid of any surface components and features only minimal circuitry.

Moving to the CPU we can see the dark chrome CPU socket hardware positioned next to the array of PWM components.  The power design uses the latest military class 4 grade components for longer life, better power efficiency and stability.  You will find a total of three (yes 3) power phases on the B85 Gaming covered by an extremely ornate extruded heatsink in the shape of the MSI Gaming Dragon.

Behind the PWM cooler you will find a single 4-pin 12v CPU power connector.  Most overclocking motherboards feature larger VRMs and multiple 12v power connectors but this ie one way to reduce production costs and with no overclocking support you can better match the hardware to the available processors.

Dual channel memory comes standard on the Haswell processor and the B85M Gaming supports standard speed DDR3 modules up to 1600Mhz.  A maximum of 32GB is addressable however a 64-bit OS is required to access it all.  24pin ATX power is located in the traditional location near the upper edge of the motherboard and out of the primary airflow.  

Unlike some of the overclocking motherboards we have reviewed the B85M Gaming is really sparse.  You won’t find any voltage check points, no BIOS debug LED or any elaborate attempts to support unnecessary hardware.  Instead you get a basic motherboard supporting a Haswell based CPU and the means to build a solid gaming rig from it.