MSI Z77IA-E53 Mini-ITX Motherboard Review

The MSI Z77IA-E53 is an excellent Mini ITX motherboard, ideal for the enthusiast audience who want to overclock.  It boasts an impressive feature set to compete with the leading products from ASUS and ASRock.

We are impressed with the overclocking performance of the motherboard as we had no trouble hitting 4.6 GHz with a Intel Core i7-3770K. The limiting factor for us when overclocking was the cooler performance, as the low-end Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro cooler couldn't cope with any more volts.

That said, we doubt the motherboard would be capable of much more than 4.7 GHz using a high-end air cooler so we don't see the need to spend a lot of money on oversized heatsinks.

One negative aspect of the MSI Z77IA-E53 is the close proximity of various circuitry close to the CPU socket on the rear of the PCB.  We tried a number of coolers which utilise backplates and some of them wouldn't mount properly, either touching sensitive components or not installing level to the socket.

If you buy this motherboard be careful of which cooler you purchase.

At a price of £111 from Aria, we feel that the MSI Z77IA-E53 is a little overpriced.  We would say that the ASRock Z77-ITX is a better choice as it only costs around £100 from Aria and we had no issues with CPU cooler backplates.  Their is no doubt that the Z77IA-E53 is an impressive motherboard but a minor price drop would be welcomed.

Pros

• Attractive colour scheme.
• Onboard Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
• Good overclocking performance.

Cons

• Poor CPU Cooler compatibility.
• Quite expensive.

KitGuru says: An impressive motherboard but it is more expensive than the competition.

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