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- Date:
- Wednesday, January 22, 2014
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
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MSI Z87I GAMING Intel LGA 1150 Motherboard Review
With gigantic towers going the way of the dinosaur and power coming in smaller and smaller configurations mini-ITX gaming oriented motherboards are more attractive than ever before. We put the Z87I GAMING AC to the test and find out if good things come in small packages or big headaches do.
Introduction
MSI is a well known staple of the do it yourself computing market. It has products ranging from motherboards and other components to laptops and wireless networking equipment. Like most well established manufacturers, MSI has broadened its motherboard horizons to include a wide range of price points and features. Some offerings are targeted at gamers, or professional users. Others are budget offerings.
The MSI GAMING series’ target focus is obvious. MSI aims to get motherboards in this series into your next gaming build. Motherboards in this family have feature sets tailored for just such usage scenarios. The Killer NIC is one such feature which clearly focuses that target audience for better or for worse. I’m not a fan of the Killer NIC due to the software it uses being horrifyingly bad and reliability of connectivity being shoddy at best on virtually every motherboard I’ve ever tested that had some variation of this hardware included.
The MSI Z87I GAMING AC is based on Intel’s Z87 Express chipset and therefore supports all the features common to the chipset. Being a mini-ITX based solution the Z87I GAMING is a lean configuration devoid of a lot of fluff. There physically isn’t room for fluff on a PCB that’s roughly 7x8" in size. Features that are on the motherboard are definitely gaming oriented.
Among the gaming focus features are the Killer NIC e2205, audio boost, Sound Blaster Cinema support, USB audio power, and a gaming device port. The gaming device port is a standard PS/2 port which has been adjusted to provide a higher (1,000Hz) polling rate and supports either keyboards or mice. Audio Boost and USB audio power are features designed to improve audio quality when using analog or USB based headphones. Naturally these are things gamers look for and make sense on what would likely be a very portable machine.
Main Specifications Overview:
Detailed Specifications Overview:
Packaging
The Z87I GAMING is a small motherboard and therefore only requires a very small box. The motherboard comes with few accessories; SATA cables, an I/O shield, driver discs, Wi-Fi antennas, user manual, quick start guide, and a case badge,
Board Layout
The layout of the Z87I GAMING isn’t the best I’ve seen on a mITX motherboard. The main issue is the location of all the system panel headers. These aren’t well marked and are close to the CPU power lead. The header is configured like a USB header which I also dislike.
The CPU socket area is as clear as it can be under the circumstances. Lower profile memory modules are probably a good idea though I doubt anyone will want to use larger CPU cooling solutions given chassis constraints in this form factor. Aside from that there aren’t any other glaring issues that I can see.
Due to the size of the Z87I GAMING motherboard, the chipset is actually located near the CPU socket. It’s cooled through a flat heat sink which has a heat pipe running through it that comes from the MOSFET cooling solution behind the CPU socket. Aesthetically, the chipset cooler sports a dragon motif like all motherboards in this series.
The Z87I GAMING motherboard is equipped with two 240-pin DDR3 DIMM slots supporting up to 16GB of RAM. Through overclocking, memory speeds up to DDR3 3000MHz are supported. Due to the proximity of these slots to the CPU socket careful selection of modules (low profile) or selection of a smaller cooling system is probably advisable.
The expansion slot area consists of one PCI-Express x16 slot. Due to the mITX form factor there are no real layout considerations or anything MSI could have done to improve it or mess it up.
The I/O panel is packed full of connectivity options. These include USB 2.0, 3.0, PS/2, optical, HDMI, DisplayPort, eSATA, RJ-45 and analog audio jacks.