The logo will light up upon being turned on, though I would prefer if they lit up the dragon logo instead. A large heatsink with the MSI dragon emblem as well as the MSI logo adorned the lower right corner of the Z97 GAMING 7 motherboard. It’s one of the best looking Z97 entries out there as everything looks like it’s meant to be there, like the two heatsink flanking the CPU slot. Indeed, there is no clutter or pieces looking out of place.
MSI Z97 GAMING 7 CODE 63 FULL
While the board is actually a full ATX sized board, MSI has managed to arrange all of the chipset, I/O slots and heatsink in such a way that the motherboard looks spacious. As expected, there is something satisfying when I took a gander at the GAMING 7.
The motherboard itself feels hefty but is not overly so. Yes dear readers, MSI finally realised that there are overclocking newbies and decides to help them out.
MSI Z97 GAMING 7 CODE 63 HOW TO
This includes the driver DVD, a user guide, SATA sticker, four SATA cables, a SLi cable, I/O backplate, an audio power cable, and, for those who have no idea on how to overclock, an overclocking guide. Taking this out will reveal the various knick-knacks that come with the Z97 system. Opening the box, I had been greeted with the GAMING 7 itself, which sits in its own protective compartment. If first impressions can sell, this certainly would. Luckily for me, MSI is one of those manufacturers and also one of the first to hand out a Z97 board for me to play around with.Īs the name implies, this motherboard falls into the MSI GAMING line, hence coming in the expected black and red hues as well as being adorned with the brand’s dragon emblem. This is the first time in ages that Intel won’t release its own motherboard of its own for the new chipset, hence I had to rely on third party manufacturers to test out the new specs. This chipset not only supports the current LGA 1150 Haswell processor but also the upcoming updated Haswell as well as the highly anticipated 5th generation Intel Core Broadwell 14nm processor. So it’s to nobody’s surprise that the latest chipset from Intel is dubbed the Wildcat Point (OK, I admit, I made this up!). How does it fare? Read on.Įveryone loves cats…well almost everyone. In the name of science and taking one for the team, I dusted off my lab coat to test out this beauty. And hallelujah! The guys at MSI has answered our prayers with its first Z97 motherboard – the Z97 GAMING 7.
GPU-Z ASIC Quality, MSI: 79.3, PowerColor 73.Since the day Intel announced about its plans to introduce the Z97 chipset to cater for the upcoming Haswell update, I had been gearing to try it out. Let's just not hope that reviewers get low-power-picked cards and the high-power cards end up with customers. It might also be possible that the variation between Hawaii GPUs is very large and I got an unlucky sample. I first do one run of about 2 minutes, then do another for which power is measured, which ensures you get realistic long-term gaming conditions, not just some magical numbers that don't apply to gaming.Īlso, we are testing real card-only power consumption while many other sites test system power, this could also be a factor.
GPU temperature is a huge factor for power consumption, the hotter the GPU, the higher power draw, for doing the same thing.Īlso I'm not starting my power consumption test from a cold card. MSI is running higher clocks, at higher voltage, and the card gets hotter. Next, I shut down the system, removed the PowerColor card, installed the MSI card, booted up the system, ran power testing again, and the numbers in my review are confirmed. Which seems to fall in line with what to expect. So I've benched power consumption of the PowerColor R9 390X PCS+ and I get: