MSI Z97M Gaming

The B85M and the Z97M are both micro ATX motherboards, add that to the shared styling of each of the boxes in the Gaming Series and you could easily mix up the Z97M with the B85M on the shelf. The Z97M has the same red and black them and large dragon on the front of the box. Beyond the name you have to look deeper to find things like the Audio Boost 2 logo, otherwise the boxes look the same on the top. On the back MSI touches on the Killer E2200 NIC, Audio Boost 2, USB Audio Power as well as the multi GPU support, Sound Blaster Cinema 2, their gaming app, and Xsplit Gamecaster being included. They also include a small specification listing as well as a line drawing of the rear I/O to show all of the connections you will have.

For documentation you get a User Guide as well as a fold out installation guide. You also get a door hanger, a metal case badge, and a set of SATA cable labels. Of course they also include a driver/software disc as well.

MSI included the front panel connection helpers as well. If you plan on using this case is a small case they will come in handy!

The rear I/O plate continues the black and red theme with all of the writing in red on the full black background. On the back side of it I really love the use of foam rather than the small springs that get caught on everything.

I love that MSI included a black Crossfire bridge with the Z97M, up until recently everyone just used those ugly copper colored bridges that look bad in nearly every build. Ironically with AMDs latest video cards not needing bridges it is a little late, but still welcomed. For SATA cables you get four black cables, two have right angle connections and the other two have straight connections. I love that they included both. Lastly the small connector in the bottom left is the USB Audio Power connection. You can use this to hook up an additional Molex plug to the Z97M to give more power to your USB plugs to help give the most stable power to USB sound cards.

While the Z97M shares a very similar layout to the B85M, MSI made multiple board wide changes that give it a distinguished look. For one it has the new updated heatsink design, but I will get to that here in just a second. We also have a blacker PCB color, features introduced with Z97 like the M.2 connector, and there are a few important upgrades around on the board like additional USB connections and upgrades in the power circuitry and audio chipset. In other words, the Z97M might look similar to the B85M that I went over in the last section, but there are a surprising number of changes that help justify the higher cost. The one thing that doesn’t change is the Z87M still has the same Micro ATX form factor.

So the old cooling design featured dragon shaped heatsinks and a large dragon cutout on the chipset coolers. In the case of the B85M it also had half as many heatsinks as the Z97M. To keep things cool the Z97M also has a heatpipe between those two heatsinks. The new design still uses a similar red color on the black, but the dragon features are limited to a small dragon photo on the end of the heatsinks and the dragon in the Gaming Series logo on the chipset. This design will cool as well as before (or in the case of the B85M the Z97M will cool even better), while giving you a cleaner styling that more people will like. There wasn’t anything wrong with the dragons, but not everyone is a big dragon fan.

Starting up in the top left corner we have an eight pin power connection for the CPU. This one is slightly farther away from the heatsink than the B85M, giving a little more room to plug and unplug. Surprisingly there aren’t any random connections up in between the heatsink and the rear I/O panel, so the only other header around the CPU is the CPU 4 pin PWM fan header to the right of the top heatsink.

The top right corner is where things really start to pick up and show why the Z97M is a better board than the B85M. You have four DDR3 DIMMs in all black and to the right of them there is a second CPU 4 pin PWM fan header for heatsinks with two fans. Next, you have the OC Genie button along with power and rest buttons, all three light up when the board has power to it. Just below the power buttons is an LED readout that shows your post information and errors as well as CPU temperatures when you are running. Lastly in this photo is the 24 pin motherboard power connection.

Down in the bottom right corner, starting from below the 24 pin power, is a black USB 3.0 header. Just past that are the 6 right angle SATA 3 ports that run off of the Intel controller. Down in the bottom right corner are the two front panel connections, this time MSI didn’t include labels or colors to help with the installation. Make sure you use the helpers or keep your manual around. Next we have our third 4 pin PWM fan header as well as two USB 2.0 headers.

In the bottom left corner, starting from the USB 2.0 headers mentioned in the previous picture we have a fourth and final 4 pin PWM fan header. Next to it is a plug for the USB Audio Power adapter that I spoke about earlier. The switch next to the plug turns the USB Audio Power on and off. Next is the front panel audio connection and the Audio Boost 2 chipset. We have 17 gold Nichicon caps and the EMI shield over the headphone amp that lights up when powered on with the Audio Boost logo in red. Around all of the audio chipset is a clear section of the board that lights up red when powered on as well to show that the entire audio chipset is separate from the rest of the motherboard. For PCI slots we have a little more going on with the Z97M. You get two PCIe x1 slots and two PCIe x16 slots. When only one x16 slot is being used it will run at x16, but if you hook up to both they will drop down to x8 on both. MSI slipped in a fifth slot to the right of the top x1 slot. This is a M.2 port for new high speed SSDs.

For the rear I/O panel you get a total of 8 USB ports. Two of them are USB 2.0 and they are the red ports that have additional gold platting to give longer life when you unplug and plug your keyboard and mouse in often like pro gamers do. The other six USB ports are all USB 3.0 and have the standard blue color. On the right you have six red and black themed audio connections to match the rear I/O panel that is also red and black. The black ports can all be used for anything while the red port is the port that is hooked up to the built in headphone amplifier. Up under two of the USB 3.0 ports are two red eSATA connections for those of you who still have eSATA devices floating around. The red Ethernet port is the e2200 Killer NIC. MSI is using killer NICs on all of their overclocking and gaming boards. I mentioned earlier in this roundup. I had issues with them in the past because I had multiple fail, but the MSI board in one of my LAN rigs has a Killer NIC and it seems to be holding up better than my previous experiences. For display connections you get a full sized DisplayPort and full sized HDMI, this board has fewer onboard options because they expect that you will be using a dedicated card. Dropping the DVI and VGA gives more room for other options. Options like the small Clear CMOS button just to the right of the red USB 2.0 ports.

Unlike the B85M the Z97i has a pure black PCB giving it an even better look. On the back side we can see it better as well as a few of the logos that they are most likely required to have on the PCB. Having the logos on the back keeps the top of the board even cleaner looking as well.