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MSI Z97 XPOWER AC Motherboard Review

Motherboards/Intel S1150 by leeghoofd @ 2014-09-26

MSI continues to update their range of Overclocking motherboards with each new major chipset release. When Intel released their brand new socket 1150 Z97 chipset MSI was ready with another three motherboards targeted at the OC crowd. The affordable Z97 MPOWER exists in two versions: the Z97 MPOWER and the Z97 MPOWER MAX AC and the ultimate flagship of all LGA1150 motherboards must be the Z97 XPOWER AC. The latter being the one and only Z97 based motherboard supporting out of the box 4-way SLI GPU setups. The included accessories are too numerous to list, most interesting for overclockers will be the inclusion of the Delid guard and the OC Fan stand. Time to unravel MSI's latest OC addition...

A Closer Look Part I

Even though the original roots of this board are with overclockers in mind, MSI opted to enhance the Intel Z97 SATA III solution with a 3rd Party ASMedia ASM1061 SATA III controller. Thus providing a whopping total of 10 SATA III ports at your disposal.

The Z97 XPOWER AC supports up to Quad 4-Way SLI and idem ditto Crossfire GPU setups. The PLX PEX 8747 chip is up to the task to divide the numerous available PCIe lanes over the different PCIe slots.

Slot 1,2 & 5 are true PCIe X16 slots
Slot 3 & 7 are PCIe X8 slots
Slot 4 & 6 are for add-on cards and are x1 versions

The MSI Z97 XPOWER AC can support GPU setups in the following manner:

x0 /x16 /x0 /x0 /x0 (single GPU without PLX latency, fastest option for single card users)
x16 /x0 /x0 /x16 /x0 (loads of clearance between the GPUs)
x16 /x0 /x0 /x8 /x8
x8 /x0 /x8 /x8 /x8

The MSI Ceasefire PEG switches allow to enable or disable individually the x8 or X16 PCIe slots, allowing easy debugging of a bad graphics card or quickly switching between different Multi-GPU solutions without the need to unplug one or more cards.. MSI also printed on the PCB the optimal installation method for maximum performance when plugging your graphic cards.

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