Connectors and I/O

In total, MSI equipped the Z97 MPower Max AC motherboard with eight SATA 6Gbps connectors. This means you get six native SATA-III ports from the PCH and two SATA-III from another chip which is in this case an ASM1061 from ASMedia. With this motherboard you get three PCIe 16x Gen 3.0 and four PCIe 1x Gen 2.0 slot and all of them have been painted black. From top to bottom for the PCIe 16x you have: 16 lanes, 8 lanes and 8 lanes. This means you can do 8x/8x SLI/CrossFire and 8x/4x/4x CrossFireX (3-way). Basically these are the standard options you get with any Intel's Z97 based motherboard, that does not feature a PLX chip. The placement of the PCIe connectors has been well thought. There are for example two slots inbetween the two main PCIe x16 in order to provide a multi-GPU configuration with fresh air.
Something that is almost standard nowadays with premium motherboards are the practical onboard power- and reset-buttons as well as a debug LED. MSI also added some extra stuff like two physical BIOS chips as well as a switch to select which one you actually want to use. Furthermore there is an OC Genie button, voltage reading points and a Go-BIOS button. This last one is here to help you get into the BIOS on next boot after pressing it.
The BIOS can be cleared by removing the battery or simply by pushing the clr_CMOS button located in the back panel.



In total, you will find five fan headers on the MSI Z97 MPower Max AC, which is enough to provide an overclocking rig or even a high-end gaming machine with plenty of fresh air. A closer look at the pictures below shows where they have been placed. All the fan headers are PWM (4-pin) type.



Looking at the external connectors placed directly at the I/O-panel, MSI has equipped the new Z97 MPower motherboard with a P/S2 connector, eight USB 3.0 ports, one Gigabit Ethernet port, one HDMI connectors, a DisplayPort, two USB 2.0 ports, the CLR_CMOS button as well as an optical out and the analogue audio panel.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 14 - SiSoft Sandra 2
Page 2 - Specs and Delivery	Page 15 - UC Bench
Page 3 - Features	Page 16 - Super Pi 1M / 32M
Page 4 - Layout	Page 17 - wPrime 1024M Multi Core
Page 5 - Connectors and I/O	Page 18 - Cinebench
Page 6 - BIOS	Page 19 - Bioshock: Infinite
Page 7 - Test setup	Page 20 - Metro Last Light
Page 8 - Preview / Gallery	Page 21 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 9 - 3D Mark	Page 22 - Power Consumption
Page 10 - 3D Mark 11	Page 23 - Performance Rating
Page 11 - 3D Mark Vantage	Page 24 - Price Comparison
Page 12 - PC Mark 7	Page 25 - Conclusion
Page 13 - SiSoft Sandra 1