Military Class 4 Components |
MSI's fancy name for high quality components, the
Military Class 4 Components certified motherboards, are equiped with Hi-CCAP, Super Ferrite Choke and Dark CAPs for better stability, durability,
efficiency and current as well as DrMOS 4, which is the name of the new MOSFETs which
should deliver more than 600+ Watts for overclocking. |
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Super stable with Guard-Pro
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On their latest motherboads MSI has added a couple
of new
features, named Guard-Pro, which are divided in six different categories
and are basicaly the circuit protection where MSI selected the best materials, Eco
Power which
physically cuts the power to unsed chips in order to save more than 29% power
usage, Humidity Protection wich is very good for humid places and has
10% higher failure rate on PCB, High Temperature protection where MSI
tested components in the hardest environments to insure stable operation,
ESD Protection used for the new black I/O shield protect the board
against electro-static discharge, and EMI Protection, which is made to reduce the
impact of electromagnetic interference. |
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Gaming Device Port
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Looking at the I/O shield we find two red USB ports which
MSI calls Gaming Device Ports and which are optimized to deliver the best
connectivity for gaming mice while helping gamers to have faster mouse
response where needed. |
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Dragon Armor
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The new MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC comes with the so called Dragon Armor.
It
covers the I/O shield to protect against electro magnetic interference.
Apart from that also protects the audio chip and capacitors from EMI
noise in order to improve signal clarity. |
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OC Genie 4 / Click Bios 4 |
These days, all the motherboard companies care about
overclocking and MSI was one of the first companies which helped normal users to
overclock their system. The OC Genie 4 is a button for Overclocking CPU,
Memory and the iGPU, and allows you to get up to 20 percent more
performance with a simple press of a button. |
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Xtreme Audio DAC + Audio Boost 2
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MSI equips its latest and greatest motherboard with an improved audio
solution which includes the Realtek ALC1150 chip, Dual headphone amplifier. At the I/O shield we find golden audio
jacks which is to improve the audio signals as well as high quality capacitors
from nichicon and the PCB
separation, As well as USB audio power to inhance USB audio quality and
stable 5V power and better signal transmission over USB. |
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Killer Ethernet
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It is rather obvious that MSI is not only
optimizing this board for overclocking but also for gaming as well. Next to
the beefed up audio solution there is the Killer Ethernet chip, which
gives gamers additional control over a variety of network settings,
which in the end can help reduce latency. |
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M.2 Support
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The
new Z97 Gaming 9 AC motherboard from MSI features an M.2 slot which is placed between the
two PCIe slots. This motherboard can be equipped with an SSD in M.2 format
and it is wired directly to the Z97 PCH via two PCI Express lanes,
therefore offering x2 bandwidth. In other words up to 10 Gbps can be pushed over the bus through this slot, almost doubling
the performance compared to the SATA-III port.
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MSI Z97 MPower AC Review 