Final words and conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

The Mini-ITX form factor fascinates me very much. It is just incredible to see how much gear and performance the manufacturers can inject into something as big as 17x17 cm. I mean even the upcoming Devils Canyon Core i7 4790K processor would be suited for this platform, including overclocking. Heck our 4770K already ran 4800 MHz on this small marvel. Then all the SATA3 ports, the full x16 PCIe slot. Then the audio based solution of the ALC 1150 codec from Realtek swayed over by a Creative Sound Blaster Cinema 2 software package you're getting improved surround sound with just stereo headphones or speakers. And MSI tops it off with first class Ethernet in the form of a Gigabit Killer NIC jack and awesome AC wireless compatibility.

The Platform & the motherboard

Now, the Intel Z97 chipset all by itself is not really interesting from an upgrade point of view if you bought a PC in say the last two years. It is a re-spin of the Z87 DNA. There are a couple of differences that the chipset however offers, and that's making PCIe storage units compatible with standards like SATA Express and M2 PCIe SSDs. But if you purchased a Z87 motherboard and a Haswell processor last year already, by all means there is just no reason to upgrade whatsoever. Even coming from Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge processors and the Z77 platform will not change my mind about this recommendation. The big conundrum however is this, Z97 motherboards can be very interesting if you are in need of an upgrade. See the motherboard manufacturers simply went nuts with their motherboard designs and i believe that 2014 has to be the best year of them all if you look at what the motherboard manufacturers did and now are offering.

But back to the Z97I Gaming AC as a whole. You could build an intensely small PC based on a small ITX chassis and then gain the major performance of the Core i7 4770K (or any other 4th Generation Intel Core processor). Then you can tweak it as well as any enthusiast class motherboard. For the Z97 part, MSI redesigned the looks and obviously we can't forget about all the other features. 17x17cm and still being able to connect 4 SATA 6G storage units for example. Overall from any point of view the Z97I Gaming AC from MSI has been done right. We do need mention one "issue" though. Much like its Z87 counter-part, the location of the CPU socket can be problematic of you mount a somewhat bigger cooler. It could block the PCIe slot. Keep that in mind. But a board like this simply deserves some kind of liquid cooling as far as I am concerned. So yeah, other then that remark, I have nothing but good to say, power consumption is low, it has all the features you wish for, including; a wide array of display connectivity, a Gigabit LAN jack and then even AC WIFI and WIDI. Combined with the five SATA 6Gbps ports we can hardly understand that a 17x17cm board can be this powerful and feature rich.

Storage

Combined with the four SATA 6Gbps ports we can hardly understand that a 17x17cm board can be this powerful and feature rich. What puzzles more storage wise are two things though, MSI opted to include two eSATA ports at the read IO backpanel. eSATA is a thing of the past and as such these connectors will be useless. I would have much more liked to see two extra SATA3 ports on-board the PCB. Secondly, and this is my biggest gripe. MSI did not ingrate a M.2. PCIe SSD slot onto the motherboard. These slots are small and it is a prime selling point for the Z97 chipset. That's a bit of a miss really.

Performance

The baseline performance is at the level of enthusiast class Z87/Z97 motherboards, and when tweaking, well as you have been able to see, we reached 4800 MHz stable. The newly revised ClickBIOS uEFI interface finally has become mature and I actually start to really like it. It's easy to navigate through with a mouse and a couple of new features like the monitoring pages just kick black booty. So pop a nice liquid cooling kit on the processor and you will get to the 4600 MHz range with a 4770K easily, push a little harder on voltages and 4800 will become in range. For this review we used a Corsair H100 liquid cooler which does the job just fine. Proper liquid cooling is the only way to go once you pass 4600 MHz. The overall baseline performance is really good though, definitely a notch faster than Intel's reference performance. 

Aesthetics

Well, llok at the photo above, how can you not like what you see. An all black and red design, and even with the board stuffed to the brim with hardware the PCB remains clean looking. it has to be the cutest and smallest little mainboard that actually looks real good anno Q2 2014. Graphics card wise the MSI R9 270X could be a perfect match for a setup like this (at this form factor). Of course you can argue the looks for the graphics card cooler, but truthfully, it does the job well as the 270X remains silent and at operating temperatures of below 65 Degrees C. Mind you though that if you use a small form factor chassis you will have to think about internal airflow, graphics cards always need inbound cold air and a spot to exhaust hot air.

Tweaking

We mentioned it in the above chapter of this conclusion already, but overall non-overclocked performance as stated is above the baseline of the reference Z87 and Z97 motherboards we tested, with an offset here and there of course. The tweaking performance of this motherboard is on par with what we expected. We got the 4770K processor rocking stable at 4800 MHz with the memory (XMP enabled) at 2133 very easily, and that's not bad at all. Proper liquid cooling definitely deserves a recommendation here.

Final Words

Handy related downloads: 

• • Prime95
  • SiSoft Sandra
  • AIDA
  • CPU-Z
  • HWMonitor
    
    
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