MSI Z97 XPOWER AC Motherboard Review

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SATA ports -- MSI is equipping the board with a good ten (!) SATA3 ports and one M.2 PCI-E SSD slot. MSi makes use of two controllers:

Intel Z97 Express Chipset

  • 6 x SATA 6Gb/s ports (SATA1-6)
  • 1 x M.2 port
  • M.2 port supports M.2 SATA 6Gb/s module
  • M.2 port supports M.2 PCIe module up to 10Gb/s speed
  • M.2 port supports 4.2 cm / 6 cm / 8 cm length module

ASMedia® ASM1061 chipset

  • 4 x SATA 6Gb/s ports (SATA7-10)

* The SATA5 and SATA6 ports will be unavailable when installing a module in the M.2 port.

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You will receive a WIFI module in this kit. This unit will offer you support of 802.11 ac/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and even Intel WiDi (Wireless Display) and by using a WiDi receiver (not included) you can watch movies on your TV without the need for any cables.
 

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Installation of this unit is a bit of a negative though, it is hard to precisely psition the unit and then once you have seated it properly, you need to turn around the motherboard and secure the unit with a screw. 802.11 ac/b/g/n is great though. With the right router you could achieve 867Mbps. That's more theoretical though, still you'll have plenty of bandwidth available if you got your WIFI network up and running properly with the right gear. 

 

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The Z97 has an improved 16 Phase DigitALL Power Design. The board comes with diagnostic LEDs and voltage measurement points. The motherboard features no less than five PCI-E x16 Gen 3.0 expansion slots and two PCI-E x1 slots. MSI can offer you full quad SLI/Crossfire as they added a PLX8747 gen3 switch chip. This way you have the maximum available bandwidth for your testosteron filled benchmark runs with multiple GPUs. Small note here, the PLX8747 will add a tiny bit of latency, as more hardware equals latency. It's the nature of the beast. However MSI did something very clever. If you use only one graphics card then the PLX chip is bypassed as the upper PCIe slot is connected directly towards the processor at x16 gen 3.0 PCIe lanes. 

You will get four DIMM slots offer support for dual-channel DDR3 memory up to even 3200 MHz (OC). You can install a maximum of 32 GB in total. XMP is supported, we'll show you this petit setup running at 2133 MHz. Of course MSI applied their Military Class IV components on the motherboard with updated DrMOS MosFETs and aluminum colored dark caps that are not only going to increase the motherbaords lifespan, they look magnificent on this motherboard as well. 

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The OC Genie increases your overall CPU and Memory performance (pressing it will result in a Core i7 4770K to OC to 4200 MHz). The one with the lightning bolt is a discharge button, holding this button for 2 seconds completely wipes your motherboard from all settings. The CLR CMOS button only limits itself to the BIOS/VRAM but this Complete Discharge button even removes information from the Z97 PCH. There is also a set of + and – buttons allowing you to adjust your Base Clock in real time. The BLCK_STEP switch allows you to program these buttons at 1 MHz or 0.1 MHz increments. The upper + - buttons allow you to change the multiplier up/down.

All the connectors have ESD protection in order to prevent short circuit.  All the way below  you will spot V-Check Points to accurately measure voltages for the CPU, integrated graphics, memory, and PCH. To the left you can see a Diagnistic post LED.

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