Review: MSI Z77 MPower
Published by Christian Ney on 12.10.12Page:
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? |
|
| Performance | + | - | |
| MSI's motherboards aren't known for their efficiency and this one is unfortunately no exception. For exemple in very efficiency demanding benchmarks like SuperPi 32M the MPower scored almost last out of 20, nineteenth to be precise. However we were surprised to see it in the TOP3 under 3DMark01, that's quite an achievement in fact, usually you should see ASUS, Gigabyte and ASRock dominating there. On average this motherboard is in the middle of the tables. Looking at the power consumption, the MPower does very well, mostly due to the lack of extra features but still it is a very good result for a "meant for OC" motherboard. | - Power Consumptoion - 3Dmark2001 | - Performances on average - SuperPi 32M | |
| BIOS / Overclocking | + | - | |
| Finally the overclocking part but first let's talk about the BIOS first. The BIOS is excellent, MSI did a great job. It is not perfect but it is a very huge jump compared to the BIOS the manufacturer used to have. For a detailed description about what is good and what is not, please refer to the page dedicated to the BIOS. The overclocking on this motherboard is very easy and pleasant. The BIOS is very easy to configure and the motherboard worked well and did what we expected. We pushed our i7 3770K to 5GHz stable under aircooling without any issues. Also memory overclocking was really easy and good. My processor can do 1'460 MHz on the memory (limitation by the IMC (Integrated Memory Controller) on the best motherboards around working a bit with BIOS settings. On the MPower I didn't need to work with the BIOS at all, I just set the basic settings and it worked like a charm. It was even possible to boot directly at DDR3-2800 which most of the other motherboards I had, failed to do. A more detailed overclocking article on MPower will be released soon. | - Best BIOS from MSI ever - Memory Overclocking | - Room for improvement | |
| Recommendation | + | - | |
| We strongly recommand this motherboard to overclockers, who else. Top overclockers will go for motherboard like the Maximus V Extreme or Formula anyway but this motherboard is very good for beginners and enthusiasts. Especially because the BIOS is very simple and it does what you ask without adjusting a lot of settings and because of it's very attractive price. The MPower being 60 Euros cheaper than the Maximus V Formula for exemple. | -
Overclocking - Enthusiasts |
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| Rating | |||
| We give the MSI Z77 MPower four out of five stars. | |||
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Author: c.ney@ocaholic.ch
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