MSI Z97 MPower AC Review
Published by Hiwa Pouri on 02.03.15Page:
Conclusion
| Allgemein | + | - | |
| A closer look at the motherboard lineup from MSI reveals that the Z97 MPower Max AC is the second best equipped model. Therefore it comes with some really neat features, like for example a highly powerful power design regarding CPU and memory. The detailed 20-phase power design is going to be more than enough for any overclocker, no matter what CPU/GPU related record he wants to break. MSI also equipped this board with some features for gamers. A beefed-up audio solution as well as integrated WiFi and Bluetooh. Unfortunately, it lacks a SATA Express slot, which is the only drawback so far. Apart from the features for gamers, the bundle is rich and there is more than you will ever need with this board. |
- Design - Features - Bundle - WiFi AC |
- No SATA Express Connector | |
| Layout | + | - | |
| Overall, the layout of the MSI Z97
MPower Max AC has been well thought. Once more
you get practical angled SATA
connectors which can be found on almost all better motherboards on the
market today. Other
than that, there is also an angled USB3 connector. There are also
practical power- and reset-buttons along with a clr_CMOS button which one is
located at the I/O panel. Furthermore there is even a debug display which
is very useful in case you should have issues with a component in your
system or the board itself. In total, you will find three PCI Express Gen3 x16
slots, which have been very well positioned. Between the two main PCIe
x16 you will find two slot space to provide good airflow for a dual
graphics card setup. It also features four PCIe Gen2 x1 slots. MSI also provided their board with an unpluggable PCIe Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module. The rest is almost standard (eight USB3, eight SATA3, one internal USB3 connector (for two USB3 ports)). As this is MSI's overclocking motherboard, you also get voltage reading points, OC Genie buttons and two physical BIOS with a DIP switch to select the one you want. |
-Angled SATA and USB3 connectors
- Power/Reset-Button onboard - Debug display / CLR_CMOS - 6x USB 3.0 - Bluetooth/Wi-Fi - 2x BIOS - WiFi AC |
||
| Performance | + | - | |
| Calculating the average of all 3D benchmarks we ran, we see that this board ranks in the middle of our comparison tables. When calculating the average of all 2D results, this motherboard ends up in the bottom quarter of the list. The performance of this board could be a little bit better and we certainly hope that MSI's BIOS team will have another look at the BIOS and improve performance. On another note, when we take the power consumption into consideration, it becomes clearly visible, that since this board comes with lots of features, it draws a lot of power as well. |
- 3DMark FireStrike - UC Bench |
- PC Mark 07 (Video playback) - Super Pi 1m and 32m - Power Consumption Idle and Full |
|
| Overclocking / BIOS | + | - | |
| The first BIOS in which we tested the overclocking potential was bad with all memory ICs, but the latest BIOS from MSI is definitely great! It is not perfect but it is a huge jump compared to the BIOS that has been used before. The MSI MPower's latest BIOS works well with all memory ICs, except MFR. The motherboard really likes the new ICs like Hynix CFR, BFR and Samsung new ICs, and it even automatically sets the right RTL and IOL settings on both channels. This motherboard board could be amongst the very best if it would have been tweaked perfectly for PSC ICs too. Apart from memory overclocking we didn't encounter any issues when overclocking our Core i7-4770K to 5GHz. |
- Sheer amount of options
- Design - Memory Overclocking |
||
| Recommendation | + | - | |
| In case you are looking for a rock solid motherboard, which is also well suitable for overclocking and features a great looking design, then the Z97 MPower Max AC from MSI is a great choice. Checking prices on Geizhals we find offers starting at 215 Euro, which is definitely not cheap, but for this kind of money you get an excellent and feature packed motherboard. | - Gaming - Modding |
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| Rating | |||
| The MSI Z97 MPower AC receives very good 4.5 out of 5 stars. | |||
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