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:

MSI Z97i Gaming

MSI Z97M Gaming

MSI B85M Gaming

MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC

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

 

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #35311 13 Aug 2014 17:31
Things have been a little quiet around here but that is because I have been busy with both the upcoming LAN and working on reviews like this that take a little more time than normal to put together. Check out this four motherboard review of most of MSI's current socket 1550 gaming boards!

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