Z87I Gaming AC Board Layout and Photos

There is something so simple yet awesome about Mini-ITX motherboards. I love that I can fit the entire board in a photo that on a typical board would just be a ¼ shot. There are a few really interesting things about the MSI Z87I Gaming AC. I will dig into the details over the next few photos, but I really wanted to point out the oddest thing about the board. If you look at the photo below, you will see that the rear I/o panel is on the left side, like it would normally be when you install a motherboard in a standard case. What is weird is that the chipset cooler, CPU, power, front I/O, and SATA connections are all out of place from where you would normally see them on a Mini ITX motherboard. Even more importantly, the chipset cooler is actually facing a different direction, making the MSI text sideways as well as the red dragon. It will really depend on the case you go with on if this will be an issue for you. In my Lunchbox’s 2 and 3 the board is placed like a standard motherboard. In that case I suspect that the top connections might be harder to get at.

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Starting up in the top right behind the rear I/O panel you have the 8-pin CPU power connection. Above that MSI packed in the front panel audio header as well as a USB 2.0 header. Packed around the chipset cooler are five SATA 3 headers that all run on the Z87 chipset. Next you have a USB 3.0 header and then the 24 pin power connection. Just above the CPU socket you have two four pin PWM fan headers, one for the CPU and the other for a system fan.

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Over on the right side of the top of the Z87I Gaming AC we have the dual band Intel Wireless AC adapter. The adapter hooks up to a Mini PCI Express connection so if for some reason you didn’t need the wireless you could swap it out for something else. But I know I plan on taking advantage of the wireless AC. On the far right you have two black DDR3 DIMM slots giving you a capacity of up to 16 gigs of ram.

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Down on the bottom of the Z87I Gaming AC you really only have a couple things. First you have a PCI Express x16 slot that is perfect for running your high end video cards, I will show off the GTX 760 that MSI designed to work with this board in the next section. On the left side of the PCI Express slot you have the Boost Audio sound card. Up above the PCI Express slot and below the CPU socket is what MSI is calling the USB Audio Power. The idea behind this is to make sure that every single USB port does not drop below the 5v signal to make sure that USB audio cards get the power needed to perform well.

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On the rear I/O of the Z87I Gaming AC you have a wide selection of connections. Starting over on the left you have two USB 2.0 ports for your mouse and keyboard as well as a legacy PS/2 connection for those who are running IBM Model M’s. For video connections using your Haswell CPUs onboard video you have a DVI connection as well as HDMI and DisplayPort. Above the DVI connection are the two antenna connections for the wireless AC card that is included with the board as well as the reason for the AC in the board’s name. Next you have an eSATA connection as well as four USB 3.0 plugs. The USB 3.0 plugs are blue in color to be easier to spot next to the USB 2.0 ports. The Killer NIC is also red in color and above the second row of USB 3.0 ports. Lastly you have a standard set of audio connection to go with the optical plug over on the left side of the I/O.

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Being a Mini-ITX motherboard does mean there is a lot less for cooling. We have already seen the red and black dragon on the chipset, but if you look close you will also find another dragon. This one is actually next to the CPU socket on the power circuitry, from most views it just looks like a normal heatsink but the side profile shows off the hidden dragon. We saw this same heatsink on the other Gaming product line motherboards from MSI. It’s a nice touch, especially for anyone who really likes dragons.

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The back of the Z87I Gaming AC is fairly uneventful. We have a better view of the black PCB, but beyond that you will find some of the required logos, I suspect that they put them here due to the board’s small size but I did see this same idea on the MPower board. On the MPower they did this to give the board a clean look.

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #33770 24 Jan 2014 16:35
For those of you who are into small form factor gaming, MSI has a new motherboard and video card that you might be interested in. Check it out!
Plague's Avatar
Plague replied the topic: #33772 24 Jan 2014 20:44
Nice stuff, motherboard is an upgrade to the one I have only intel. Video seem to be just a bit slower then the Asus card, which I find odd, but not bad either way. To bad these were not out last September. hehe

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