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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...

Test Setup and Methodology

For our stock tests we use the board as it comes out of the box. Just enter the BIOS and load the XMP profile for our 16GB Dual channel CORSAIR Vengeance Pro kit. No other interaction is done besides disabling the Audio chip and LAN port.

For the overclocked tests we swap the Vengeance Pro RAMs with the high end 8GB Corsair Dominator Platinum 2800C11 kit. The Intel i7-4770K processor will be overclocked to 4500MHz and the uncore raised to 4000MHz. The memory main timings are tightened from 11-14-14-31 to 11-13-13-31, requiring a small bump in voltage to stabilize.

The hardware setup comprises out of:

Intel i7-4770K cooled by EK WB L240 kit
Intel DZ87KLT Mainboard
ASRock Z87 OC Formula
ASRock Z97 OC Formula
ASUS Z87 Maximus VI Formula
ASUS Z97 Gene VII
Gigabyte Z87X-OC
Gigabyte Z97X-SOC FORCE (F6 bios)
MSI Z87 XPOWER
MSI Z97 XPOWER AC
16GB CORSAIR Vengeance Pro 2400C10 Dual Channel kit
ATI HD7970 GPU
CORSAIR AX1200 PSU
Western Digital Green Caviar 1TB HDD
Microcool Banchetto 101 bench setup

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