KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
The Z87 XPower sports a yellow and black colour scheme which is now associated with MSI's ‘Power' series of motherboards. A matte black, eight layer PCB and all-black expansion slots help to enhance the aesthetic appeal of what is a very attractive motherboard.
Measuring in at 34.5 x 26.4 cm, the Z87 XPower conforms to the XL-ATX form factor. Make sure that your case is capable of housing this larger-than-ATX board; we used an NZXT Phantom 630.
Four DIMM slots are capable of housing up to 64 gigabytes of DDR3 memory. MSI claims that the Z87 XPower is capable of utilising memory frequencies of up to 3000MHz – we will be putting that claim to the test.
A BIOS selection switch located beneath the DIMM slots gives users the freedom of being able to manually switch between the primary and secondary BIOS if one of them is corrupted.
Eight onboard buttons give overclockers the option of tweaking settings via the motherboard directly. One set of +/- buttons controls the base clock, while the other adjusts the CPU core ratio. A base clock step switch allows the increment to be adjusted from 0.1MHz to 1MHz.
The Z87 XPower employs an onboard discharge button which essentially provides a complete factory reset. This button is far easier to access and use than removing the battery with multiple graphics cards installed.
Seven V-check points can be used to obtain direct voltage readings from the CPU, DDR, and other motherboard components.
MSI manages the Z87 XPower's 32 phase VRM with a ‘DigitALL Power' digital PWM controller. Digital control helps to provide more accurate readings and inputs in comparison to its analogue predecessor.
Three considerably-sized metal heatsinks are connected by a flattened heatpipe. The upper and left sinks are given the task of cooling 16 of the 32 DrMOS4 MOSFETs, along with two thin metal strips which cool the remaining 16 transistors on the board's rear side.
All 32 chokes are passively cooled by incidental airflow striking their large surface area. Extreme overclockers or watercooling users would be wise to use a fan which blows air directly onto the power-delivery chokes.
The central heatsink cools PLX's PEX 8747 48-lane, PCI-E 3.0 switch chip.
A pair of 8-pin power connectors is found in the standard location in the board's upper-left corner. MSI leaves enough space between the two VRM heatsinks to avoid issues when trying to connect the power cables.
Also found in the upper-left corner is the connection for MSI's removable WiFi/WiDi/BT module. We'll talk about this device in greater depth further into the review.
4-way SLI/CrossFire is made possible by the intelligent spacing of the Z87 XPower's five PCI-E X16 expansion slots. There is also plenty of cooling space available for users with dual-card setups. We are glad to see MSI providing a full seven expansion slots rather than leave some spaces wasted as we have seen on other boards in the past.
Located near to the PLX chip are eight PCI-E lane switches which allow the Haswell CPU to feed all sixteen of its Gen3 lanes directly to a single expansion slot – PCI_E2. This is convenient for users with a single graphics card as the dedicated PCI-E x16 slot is powered by sixteen lanes coming directly from the CPU, bypassing the latency-increasing PLX switch.
When more than one expansion slot is occupied, the lanes no longer bypass the PLX chip and are instead split between the add-on cards. The lane arrangements are: (0, 16, 0, 0, 0), (16, 0, 0, 16, 0), (8, 0, 8, 16, 0), (8, 0, 8, 8, 8).
MSI adds a 6-pin PCI-E power connection above the uppermost expansion slot. This port is to be used when the Z87 XPower is tasked by the additional power requirements of multi-GPU configurations. There is no need to jeopardise cable management and attach the power connector when a single graphics card is being used.
Headers for HD audio, four USB 2.0 ports, and front panel buttons are found in their typical locations. Two 4-pin fan headers are also found on the Z87 XPower's bottom edge.
MSI places the GO2BIOS button adjacent to the central USB 2.0 header. This puts it in a location that is difficult to access when the XPower is installed inside a case. Positioning it near to the overclocking buttons in the board's upper-right corner would have been a better location. The button provides direct access to the BIOS when Windows 8's quick-posting, fast boot mode is enabled.
A feature that has particular importance to users with extreme cooling setups for their graphics cards is the Cease Fire switch. Each of the main PCI-E X16 lanes can be individually shut down to prevent its operation – a much quicker procedure than draining a watercooling loop and physically removing the card when troubleshooting or testing.
Located below the large PCH heatsink is an mSATA connection. The slot steals a lane from SATA_5 which operates at 6Gb/s from the Z87 chipset. We are very pleased to see MSI using a 6Gb/s connection, rather than crippling an mSATA SSD with a 3Gb/s transfer rate as we have seen on many motherboards in the past.
Ten SATA 6Gb/s ports are found on the Z87 XPower, the first six of which are powered by the Z87 chipset, while the remaining four get their bandwidth from a pair of ASMedia ASM1061 controllers. Both the right-angled and upwards-facing USB 3.0 headers are connected to the Z87 chipset's native ports.
It would seem that MSI is opting for the Z87 chipset configuration which consists of six SATA 6Gb/s ports, four USB 3.0 connections, and eight PCI-E 2.0 lanes (two of which are then used by the ASMedia SATA 6Gb/s chipsets).
MSI equips the Z87 XPower with Realtek's ALC1150 codec built around the motherboard manufacturer's ‘Audio Boost' system.
The Audio Boost system consists of an ALC1150 chip which feeds its raw signal into a Texas Instruments OPA1652 operational amplifier backed by “high-quality” audio capacitors. The amplified signal is then directed towards gold-plated audio outputs.
This entire process takes place along an isolated circuit (the illuminated yellow line on the board's left edge) which helps to minimise quality and signal losses via interference.
XPower branding is embossed into the main MOSFET heatsink, with a vibrant yellow ‘X' located on the smaller secondary sink. MSI has done a good job of making the VRM and ‘Northbridge' heatsinks attractive, while maintaining a functional and interference-free design. All three sinks should be low profile enough to avoid interference issues with large CPU coolers such as the Phanteks PH-TC14PE.
All eight of the rear panel's USB 3.0 ports are powered by ASMedia's ASM1074 chipsets. Gigabit LAN is provided by a Killer E2205 network controller.
Motherboard rear ports:
- 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo
- 1x Clear CMOS button
- 2x WiFi antenna connectors
- 2 x USB 2.0
- 8 x USB 3.0
- 1 x Optical S/PDIF-out
- 1 x RJ45 LAN jack
- 1 x 6 in 1 OFC audio jack
- 1 x DisplayPort
- 2 x HDMI
A pair of magnetic WiFi antennae gives the single-band, 2.4GHz Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2230 connection a dual-stream link capable of up to 300Mb/s using 802.11n technology. Bluetooth 4.0 and Intel Wireless Display technology are also provided by the chip.
We used the bluetooth connection without problems. Unfortunately, the wireless connection wasn't as stable. It was simple connecting to our Tenda N60 wireless-N router, but at no point were we able to achieve a connection speed greater than 144.0 Mb/s, according to Windows 7. We would strongly suggest this problem is related to the Intel wireless card, not MSI's motherboard, as our Edimax EW-7733UnD adapter had no problems connecting at 300Mb/s.
A workaround may be possible, but it may also require changing router security settings.
The red circles in the above image indicate the location of each fan header. MSI equips its Z87 XPower with seven 4-pin fan headers, two of which are designated for use with a CPU cooler, another three that feature temperature-related control, and two which operate at a manually-set static speed.
Motherboard slots and connectors:
- ATX 24-Pin power connector
- 2 x 8-pin ATX 12V power connectors
- 1 x 6-pin ATX 12V power connector (additional power for PCI-E x16 slots)
- 2 x 4-pin CPU fan connectors
- 5 x 4-pin System fan connectors
- 10 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors
- 2 x USB 2.0 connectors (supports additional 4 USB 2.0 ports)
- 2 x USB 3.0 connectors (supports additional 4 USB 3.0 ports)
- 1 x Wi-Fi/ Bluetooth module connector
- 14 x V-Check points (7x V-Check connectors, 7x V-Check spots)
- 1 x Discharge button
- 1 x Multi BIOS Switch
- 1 x Base Clock step switch
- 1 x GO2BIOS button
- 1 x OC Genie button
- 1 x Reset button
- 2 x Base Clock control buttons
- 2 x CPU Ratio control buttons
- 1 x Clear CMOS jumper
- 1 x Power button
- 1 x OC Genie mode switch
- 1 x PCIe CeaseFire Switch
- 1 x 2-Digit Debug Code LED
As shown in the above image, we installed the nVidia GTX 760 2GB graphics card in the MSI Z87 XPower motherboard's dedicated PCI-E x16 slot. The second slot from the top bypasses the PLX chip by instead using 16 PCI-E 3.0 lanes that are routed directly from the CPU. This will help to eliminate the latency that the PLX chip would have input to the system's graphics connection.
The Z87 XPower motherboard looks excellent when installed in a black-themed system. Some black and yellow memory would further enhance the appearance, along with better cable management than my attempt.
Between the onboard buttons, MSI logo, and Audio Boost system, MSI's Z87 XPower features its fair share of lighting.
The MSI and Audio Boost logos glow a yellow which matches the board's colour scheme. The isolated audio circuit is also illuminated yellow.
