It’s amazing how quickly things can add up. A great example of this is just how many motherboards a company like MSI manufactures. Just on the Intel side of things, you have multiple chipsets and then from there they have an overclocking line, gaming line, and their general line. From there they still have to break things down by price and feature set. Just for the Intel Socket 1150 they have a whopping 67 motherboards listed on their website. With the launch of Devils Canyon CPUs I really wanted to take a look at a few of their boards to get an idea of what the different price points will get you. So today, I’m going to take a look at four different Gaming motherboards ranging in size from Mini ITX to full ATX. Three are Z97 boards but there is also their only B85 gaming model slipped in as well. Combined with the Z97 Gaming 5 that I already took a look at, we should be able to get a good idea of what you should be looking at for your builds and why they have such a wide variety of motherboards.
Product Name:
Review Sample Provided by: MSI
Written by: Wes
Pictures by: Wes
Specifications
|
MSI Z97I Gaming AC Specifications |
|
|
Socket |
1150 |
|
CPU (Max Support) |
i7 |
|
Baseclock/Hyper Transport |
100MHz |
|
Chipset |
Intel® Z97 Express Chipset |
|
DDR3 Memory |
Up too DDR3 3300MHz |
|
Memory Channel |
Dual |
|
DIMM Slots |
2 |
|
Max Memory (GB) |
16 |
|
PCI-Ex16 |
1 |
|
PCI-E Gen |
Gen3(16) |
|
SATAIII |
4 |
|
RAID |
0/1/5/10 |
|
LAN |
10/100/1000*1 |
|
USB 3.0 ports (Front) |
2 |
|
USB 3.0 ports (Rear) |
4 |
|
USB 2.0 ports (Front) |
2 |
|
USB 2.0 ports (Rear) |
4 |
|
Audio ports (Rear) |
6 |
|
eSATA |
2 |
|
DisplayPort |
1 |
|
HDMI |
2 |
|
VGA Max Share Memory |
1760 |
|
DirectX |
11 |
|
Form Factor |
Mini-ITX |
|
MSI Z97M Gaming Specifications |
|
|
Socket |
1150 |
|
CPU (Max Support) |
i7 |
|
Baseclock/Hyper Transport |
100MHz |
|
Chipset |
Intel® Z97 Express Chipset |
|
DDR3 Memory |
Up too DDR3 3300MHz |
|
Memory Channel |
Dual |
|
DIMM Slots |
4 |
|
Max Memory (GB) |
32 |
|
PCI-Ex16 |
2 |
|
PCI-E Gen |
Gen3 (16,0), (8,8) |
|
PCI-Ex1 |
2 |
|
SATAIII |
6 |
|
M.2 port |
1 |
|
RAID |
0/1/5/10 |
|
TPM (header) |
1 |
|
LAN |
10/100/1000*1 |
|
USB 3.0 ports (Front) |
2 |
|
USB 3.0 ports (Rear) |
6 |
|
USB 2.0 ports (Front) |
4 |
|
USB 2.0 ports (Rear) |
2 |
|
Audio ports (Rear) |
6+Optical SPDIF |
|
eSATA |
2 |
|
DisplayPort |
1 |
|
HDMI |
1 |
|
VGA Max Share Memory |
1760 |
|
DirectX |
11 |
|
Form Factor |
M-ATX |
|
SLI |
Y |
|
CrossFire |
Y |
|
MSI B85M Gaming Specifications |
|
|
Socket |
1150 |
|
CPU (Max Support) |
i7 |
|
Baseclock/Hyper Transport |
100MHz |
|
Chipset |
Intel® B85 Express |
|
DDR3 Memory |
DDR3 1066/1333/1600 MHz |
|
Memory Channel |
Dual |
|
DIMM Slots |
4 |
|
Max Memory (GB) |
32 |
|
PCI-Ex16 |
2 |
|
PCI-E Gen |
Gen3 (16), Gen2 (4) |
|
PCI-Ex1 |
2 |
|
SATAIII |
4 |
|
SATAII |
2 |
|
TPM (header) |
1 |
|
LAN |
10/100/1000*1 |
|
USB 3.0 ports (Front) |
2 |
|
USB 3.0 ports (Rear) |
2 |
|
USB 2.0 ports (Front) |
4 |
|
USB 2.0 ports (Rear) |
4 |
|
Audio ports (Rear) |
6+Optical SPDIF-out |
|
DisplayPort |
1 |
|
VGA |
1 |
|
HDMI |
1 |
|
DVI |
1 |
|
VGA Max Share Memory |
1760 |
|
DirectX |
DX11 |
|
Form Factor |
M-ATX |
|
CrossFire |
Y |
|
MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC Specifications |
|
|
Socket |
1150 |
|
CPU (Max Support) |
i7 |
|
Baseclock/Hyper Transport |
100MHz |
|
Chipset |
Intel® Z97 Express Chipset |
|
DDR3 Memory |
Up too DDR3 3300MHz |
|
Memory Channel |
Dual |
|
DIMM Slots |
4 |
|
Max Memory (GB) |
32 |
|
PCI-Ex16 |
3 |
|
PCI-E Gen |
Gen3 (16, 0, 0), (8, 8, 0), (8, 4, 4) |
|
PCI-Ex1 |
3 |
|
SATAIII |
8 |
|
M.2 port |
1 |
|
RAID |
0/1/5/10 |
|
TPM (header) |
1 |
|
LAN |
10/100/1000*1 |
|
USB 3.0 ports (Front) |
4 |
|
USB 3.0 ports (Rear) |
8 |
|
USB 2.0 ports (Front) |
4 |
|
USB 2.0 ports (Rear) |
2 |
|
Audio ports (Rear) |
6+Optical SPDIF |
|
DisplayPort |
1 |
|
HDMI |
1 |
|
VGA Max Share Memory |
1760 |
|
DirectX |
DX11 |
|
Form Factor |
ATX |
|
SLI |
Y |
|
CrossFire |
Y |
