MSI Z87 XPower motherboard review

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The MSI Z87 Mpower MAX really goes to the max as next to the KillerNIC you'll receive additional premium features. Let me show you a couple of them. 

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So you'll receive a Bluetooth/WIFI/WIDI unit with the motherboard as well. Here you can see two antennas (included) and a little module that you can plug onto the motherboard (gap inbetween the rear IO CMOS botton and USB 3.0 block). It will offer you support of 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0 and 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. The WIDI standard has yet to become popular though we can only consider it to be an early stage transporter module as seen in Star Trek. Beam it Scotty .. dammit Beam it.

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Another new feature that you can clearly see is a shielded audio solution. MSI calls this Audio boost which is more than a metal shield of course (dark caps, the new realtek codec, shielding, headphone amplifier, software package). 

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The audio circuitry is isolated from other features, you'll enjoy less interference is the generic idea here. once powered on there is a trace in the motherbaord that will be lit and lights up. Kinda cool to see. Let me remove the cover as MSI pastered X-Fi 3 on the box ... which we never ever believe is the DSP being used. 

 

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Hah, told ya ! Above the new Realtek ALX1150 HD Codec. Also a built-in (TI OPA1652 amplifier) 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
We'll have another chapter on audio later on in the article as the codec is complemented by a SoundBlaster X-Fi 3 audio software suite.

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Next to your standard buttons MSI also integrated OC Genie button. We simply pressed the OC Genie button on the motherboard and our Core i7 4770K processor was overclocked to 4200 MHz. We wonder if there is anybody that actually uses the OC Genie button ? See, real Guru's are BIOS freakfests.

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