Motherboard Front
The black and blue theme that's now familiar with MSI motherboards and high end components is carried through to the GD45 to enhance visual appeal. Everything is pretty much where you would expect to find it with all of the connectivity found around the leading edge of the mainboard.
Motherboard Rear
To the rear of the motherboard we find nothing much of interest with none of the heatsinks featuring a backplate. Worthy of note is that the motherboard PCB has a dark brown tinge to it rather than being solid black which is a shame as it doesn't exactly add anything to the aesthetics (unless you are fond of dark brown of course)!
CPU Socket Area
Back to the front of the motherboard and the socket area is has a scattering of solid capacitors along with a couple of free standing chokes. Those wondering what the differences between the GD45 and GD45 8D are should look at the 'DIMM sockets, of which there are 8 on the GD45-8D supporting up to 128GB.
PCIe Area
The PCIe Area is full of slots however as we saw with the back of the mainboard, only the PCIe Gen3 capable ones (slots 1, 4 and 6) are full fat x16 lanes. The two other slots with slightly different latching points are 8x with the remaining black slot being PCIe x1.
The GD45 8D is capable of multi card configurations, be it Tri SLI or CrossfireX but consideration should be given to the bottom slot which will cover both on-board buttons and perhaps the USB 3.0 header.
SATA Support
There are 2x 6GB/s SATA ports (white) coupled with a further 4x SATA 3GB/s ports which should be plenty for the average user. Interestingly, MSI have added a MOLEX power socket next to the SATA ports to give multi card GPU configurations a little extra juice.
Power Port
The 8 pin ATX power port is thoughtfully positioned towards the upper left of the motherboard making for easy cable tidying.
Connectivity
The majority of the case connections are found towards the bottom of the motherboard. A serial port (16550A) connector is joined by a voice genie connector, 'Multiconnect' control port, the OC Genie button (automatic overclocking for novices) and an on-board power switch.
I/O Area
The IO area stacks up fairly well too with PS2 mice and keyboards catered for along with a CMOS clear button, Coaxial and Optical S/PDIFF ports, 2xUSB2 ports, Intel LAN, 2x USB 3.0 ports and 6x 3.5mm audio ports.
Let's take a closer look at this motherboard...
