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Over the past year we have tested many mini-ITX motherboards which have impressed us to varying degrees. The ASRock Z77E-ITX was a particular highlight with its stellar overclocking performance, rivaling some full-size ATX motherboards when paired with a Intel Core i7-3770K.
Today we are going to look at MSI‘s latest mini-ITX offering, the Z77IA-E53 motherboard. It's designed for users who are looking to build a powerful compact system based around the Intel Z77 platform. This makes it ideal for building a compact LAN gaming system in a case such as the Bitfenix Prodigy.
We will be using an Intel Core i7-3770K for our tests today.
Features
- OC Genie II: Auto OC to boost performance in 1 sec
- ClickBIOS II: Easy-to-use UEFI BIOS interface
- THX TruStudio PRO: deliver the fullest audio experience
- Support USB 3.0 & SATA 6Gb/s
For the full list of features and specification, please visit the MSI website here.
Ideal for a new build in the prodigy case.
Good product, I like their video cards more than their motherboards lately 🙂
I was quite interested in the on-board audio – they advertise the THX TruStudio, but it’s stil just a RealTek chip. I was planning on a Home-Theater/mini gaming rig, but the power seems to be very limited on ITX boards, which could be a problem if I want to upgrade.
Very in-depth review but would have been a lot more informative if the benchmarks were also directly compared against other mitx’s of the same chipset.