MSI Z77 MPower Review
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Published: 26th October 2012 | Source: MSI | Price: |
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The box packaging for the MPower is certainly eye-catching, with a chromatic effect dominating the front and the main highlights beneath a Velcro front flap. We like it a lot. Inside you have a surprisingly small selection of accessories, with just some probes standing apart from the usual array of SATA cables, manuals and driver CD.
At first glance you'd be forgiven for thinking this is a Zotac motherboard, all black with yellow highlights. We so often see red or blue slots that it's nice to see a motherboard that wouldn't be out of place on a Spinal Tap album.
The CPU area is well served by an enormous amount of power, and some rather attractive heatsinks. There is always a balance to be sought between form and function, and we think that MSI have done a fine job. The heatpipes between each heatsink are 8mm thick, which is the type of thickness we're more used to seeing on GPUs.
PCI slots are well spaced indeed, especially considering most people will only run a dual-card arrangement anyway. The battery placement is a bit of a faff, especially if you prefer to clear your CMOS with a battery removal.
One very useful feature is the inclusion of a switch to change between the two available BIOS's. With high-end overclocking boards it's always nice to have the ability to have a stable one and then tweak the other.
The RAM section is very busy indeed. As well as the ATX power there is an additional 6pin PCIe power input for multi-GPU setups, voltage monitoring points, and the now standard power/reset buttons.
Storage is handled by two SATA 6Gb/s ports and four SATA 3 Gb/s ones. At the rear we have a wealth of USB ports, DisplayPort and HDMI for iGP, WiFi/Bluetooth and the CMOS clear button.
Most Recent Comments
I was going to buy this board but my GPU is dying, so I need to replace that first
Technology, why u always brake on me? :\
Power. the lil bells went off in my head and waited (not long) till MPower was
available. call me vain, but the MPower is worth the lil extra for the color scheme
over the GD65. the actual specs are user necessities. no extra frills, just needed
parameters to have. soon as i thin the inventories down, MPower, you are MINE!
airdeano
/looks at P7N SLI Platinum board (Folding related tho!)
Great looking board, only wish that it'd been out when I was buying my motherboard
Hope they follow suit for Haswell's MPower.
a fantastic looking board and a proper bargain
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Today we take a look at the top of the range Z77 motherboard from MSI, the MPower.
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