Layout

Like we mentioned in the introduction the MSI Z97M Gaming motherboard comes with a Twin Frozr IV based design. Therefore, the PCB has a matte black finish with a few red touches on the heatsinks. The heatsinks themselves have been shaped with a lot of attention to detail and come with a matte black colour scheme. Combined, it makes the design unique and good looking. The layout itself has been well thought and there are plenty of useful features, like six USB 3.0 ports on the back, SATA 6Gbps ports, overclocking features and more.



MSI equipped the Z97M Gaming motherboard with an 8-phase digital power design with the uP1649Q from UPI taking care of the CPU VRM. The Z97M Gaming power design has one DRMOS for two phases rather than one DRMOS for one phase. All those solid capacitors are part of MSI's Military Class IV group of components so we are looking at one pretty strong power design.
The memory got a 2-phase digital power design here driven by the UPI uP01109, which is also one more phase than usual.


As far as the memory goes, you can find four DIMM-slots on the Z97M Gaming motherboard. Officially supported are the DDR3 3300 /3200 / 3100 / 3000 / 2800 / 2666 / 2600 / 2400 / 2200 / 2133 / 2000 / 1866 / 1600 / 1333 / 1066 MHz (O.C.). There is enough space between the DIMM-slots and the CPU socket which means that you will not run into any issues with large coolers, even if you choose to install memory with big heatspreaders. Also supported are the Xtreme Memory Profiles (XMP) in version 1.3. Overclocking the memory on this board with old ICs (PCS,BBSE), which are what all overlcockers are still using, is not really nice because of the BIOS issue. On the other hand, overclocking with the new Samsung ICs or the Hynix CFR,BFR,MFR is not bad for gaming and daily use PCs, but not for getting any serious high memory frequency results.


The PCH as well as the current converters are being held at adequate temperatures via passive heatsinks. The heatsink for current converters is made from a single aluminium block that uses one 8mm nickel-plated copper heatpipe. The PCH heatsink as not been been integrated into the heatpipe loop and is quite simple and flat. The cooling blocks have been very well made and also they are very well attached to the board to provide enough pressure on the components they have to cool down. They are entirely black colored with red stripes in order to go well with the rest of the MSI Gaming series components.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 4 - Layout
Page 2 - Specs and Delivery	Page 5 - Connectors and I/O
Page 3 - Features	Page 6 - Conclusion