Preview: MSI Z77 MPower

Published by Christian Ney on 25.09.12
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Conclusion

Allgemein   + -
The Z77 MPower is MSI's most beautiful motherboard they ever made. It is an high end motherboard  that comes with some nice features though in my opinion MSI could have done better. MSI chose to not overload this board with features to keep a low price tag especially for overclockers and enthusiasts but they added Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modules still. It doesn't really fit, if I was MSI I would have made two version of this board then, one like it was supposed to be and one Wi-Fi/Bluetooth edition. I think this would have made it even more interesting because they were then able to lower the price even more. I would have also improved the bundle which is as poor as possible. Though the Overclocking Guide is really nice and well made there are only four V-Measure cables while you have seven voltage reading points on the board. You also get only four SATA cables while the board has six SATA connectors.   - Kickass Design
- Price
- Bundle
       
Layout   + -

Generally the MSI Z77 MPower's layout has been well thought. Once more practical are the angled SATA connectors that you can find on almost all motherboards now out there but MSI added something more, they also angled the USB3 connector. There are also practical power- and reset-buttons along with a clr_CMOS which one is on the back panel very accessible. Furthermore there even is a debug display which is very useful in case you should have issues with a component in your system or the board itself. Totally you find three PCI Express Gen3 x16 slots, which have been very well positioned. Between the two main PCIe 16x you will find two slot space to provide good airflow for a simple dual graphics card setup. I don't think you will make more than a two graphics card setup with this motherboard anyway because SLI is only up to two cards (8x/8x) and only CrossFire is up to three cards (8x/4x/4x). Otherwise you have four PCIe Gen2 x1 connectors.
MSI provided also their board with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modules, the rest is almost standard (six USB3, four SATA3, two SATA2, one internal USB3 connector (for two USB3 ports) and so).
As MSI's overclocking motherboard you get voltage reading points, OC Genie buttons and two physical BIOS with a 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
- Bluetooth/Wi-Fi?
- PCIe-6pin power plug instead of Molex?



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


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Author: c.ney@ocaholic.ch




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Preview: MSI Z77 MPower - Motherboards > Intel > Z77 - Reviews - ocaholic