MSI Z87 XPower motherboard review

Mainboards 327 Page 1 of 21 Published by

teaser

Introduction

MSI Intel 8 Series Platform - the Mighty Z87 XPower review

A week or so ago the flagship Z87 from MSI arrived here in the office. With a smile on my face I started inspecting this what seems to be incredible motherboard. Really, it has it all, it has style, the features the extra's and the tweakability that the modern gamer that craves a need for a high end PC, wants.

Now I have tested a lot of Z87 motherboards already, but to date very few have been as impressive as what you are about to see. So let us review, test and benchmark the MSI Z87 XPower motherboard. The Z87 flaghship mainboard is intended for Intel's latest 22nm Haswell processors that are seated into Socket LGA1150. The XPower comes LOADED with features and overclock potential, it has the latest Killer E2205 chip, 'AudioBoost' audio with Creative labs SoundBlaster player complemented by 30μg gold plated audio connectors, WIFI, WIDI, maximum multi-GPU options up-to 4-way assisted by a PLX chip and well the list goes on and on really. 

Now honestly, we like the design of the the XPower little brother, the Mpower, but this XPower has got incredible looks with its two-tone black yellow color scheme. The MSI XPower has the latest Killer E2205 chip. This motherboard comes even with a very impressive VRM design (32 phases) and a component selection that makes your mouth water. Oh and is 10 SATA 6 GBps ports and a mSATA ports good enough for ya ? Or what about five PCI Express x16 gen 3.0 slots ? It doesn't stop there though, you'll receive a WIFI controller and even an Intel WIDI host (Wireless Display). Z87 is of course the Intel chipset being released for the all new Haswell processors. These motherboards will have a slightly altered feature set. The end result is a cool motherboard on a black and yellow design whilst being armed with a Killer NIC, a dedicated IC that should ensure low PING times for online gamers by prioritizing your band-with whilst giving you the option to monitor your network traffic. The overclockers amongst you will be happy as well, the XPower features a 32 Phase DigitALL Power Design to maximize your overclock. Based on new Military class IV you'll spot Hi-C Caps, Dark CAPs, Super Ferrite Chokes but also a Digital PWM, Enhanced Dual BIOS and the OC essential features which include Clear CMOS switch located at the I/O plate. There's a diagnostic Debug LED, Easy button 3, Multi BIOS II, V-Check Points and even much more. Though still based on a Realtek chip, MSI integrates AudioBoost by which they isolated the audio circuitry from. A built-in headphone amplifier allows you to use studio-grade headgear and get the most amazing sound quality out of your gaming PC.

  • Studio level integrated 600Ω headphone amplifier
  • Golden audio jacks for pure audio signals
  • EMI shielded audio codec
  • High quality audio capacitors
  • Illuminated audio PCB separation

Crave a need for setting multi-GPU based records ?  Not an issue as the Z87 XPOWER comes with a PLX-chip to enable 4-Way SLI / Crossfire. And in the situations that you only use one VGA card XPOWER comes with a dedicated PCI-E x16 slot which is directly connected to the CPU bypassing the PLX chip giving you the best possible performance (less latency) when using only 1 VGA card. Included as well is the support of 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0 as well as Intel WiDi (stands for Wireless Display) and a WiDi receiver (not included) you can watch movies on your TV (wireless) without the need for any cables.

But yeah, have a peek at this spectacular looking and feature rich motherboard, it's an all new design and then let's fire up this review. This motherboard is just WICKED.


Img_8826

Share this content
Twitter Facebook Reddit WhatsApp Email Print