MSI Z97 XPower AC LGA 1150 Motherboard Review @ [H]

MSI Z97 XPower AC LGA 1150 Motherboard Review - MSI’s Z97 XPower AC is one of its flagship LGA 1150 motherboards and is specifically designed for the overclocking enthusiast. It carries a huge list of features, a rich bundle of accessories, and and a rich price tag as well at $379. Is the Z97 XPower AC actually worth that? We wondered the same thing.

Great review, as usual. Thanks Guys... got another board on my shortlist now when I upgrade next.

Great review.

Great review. I've had this motherboard for a couple months now and everything seems pretty rock solid.

Great review - looks a very nice package overall - just curious how big the USB drive is, GBs? Thnx ahead..

Why no ASRock examples included for comparison? The Z97 Extreme 9 and ASRock Z97 OC Formula would have flexed their muscles quite comparatively all while selling for considerably less. Thin pcb not withstanding

CPO_Sharky said:

Why no ASRock examples included for comparison? The Z97 Extreme 9 and ASRock Z97 OC Formula would have flexed their muscles quite comparatively all while selling for considerably less. Thin pcb not withstanding

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The reason those weren't in the comparison is simple. We haven't reviewed those particular motherboards at this time.

5E7EN said:

Great review - looks a very nice package overall - just curious how big the USB drive is, GBs? Thnx ahead..

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You know I didn't actually check that. I'll take a look in a bit and see.

Re: SATA Express support
MSI's product pages for a number of their Z97 boards mention an optional M.2 to SATA Express adapter, but I find no mention of it anywhere else on their site.
I've found references to the adapter since May 2014, but no actual product.
Even if they do end up producing it, the header location could prove awkward, between the last two PCIe slots.

gathagan said:

Re: SATA Express support
MSI's product pages for a number of their Z97 boards mention an optional M.2 to SATA Express adapter, but I find no mention of it anywhere else on their site.
I've found references to the adapter since May 2014, but no actual product.
Even if they do end up producing it, the header location could prove awkward, between the last two PCIe slots.

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There is a picture of it on the site references in the page for the Z97 XPower AC. That's the only mention of it I could find. It certainly doesn't come in the box.

Great review. Thanks for putting in the time to do it.

I'm really tempted to get the X99 XPower because of this review, even though it was for the Z97.

Basically, apart from crappy software, it looks like MSI has everything else perfect.

- Top of the line hardware and build quality; beats all competition
- BIOS is relatively easy to use
- Overkill power design means Mosfets should stay cool
- Overclocking is solid, in no small part because of the components used

MSI does generally do a good job of updating their BIOS, and among the Taiwanese vendors, I'd say MSI has one of the better customer support systems in case something goes wrong.

So basically just held back by crappy software. Hmm, the drivers could probably be downloaded from the vendors (plus it is the latest version).

If MSI could just gets its software together, it'd be a solid choice for everyone. I guess every company right now has that "if they could get x together".

Only things I might have wanted:
- Dual NICs, preferably by Intel
- SATA Express (as covered in review)
- Not too crazy about wifi or bluetooth

Checking the online reviews specifically, the delid die guard was made for the 4770k, Not sure if the Devils Canyon chips are covered (the configuration is somewhat different).

hyperion0101 said:

Great review. Thanks for putting in the time to do it.

I'm really tempted to get the X99 XPower because of this review, even though it was for the Z97.

Basically, apart from crappy software, it looks like MSI has everything else perfect.

- Top of the line hardware and build quality; beats all competition
- BIOS is relatively easy to use
- Overkill power design means Mosfets should stay cool
- Overclocking is solid, in no small part because of the components used

MSI does generally do a good job of updating their BIOS, and among the Taiwanese vendors, I'd say MSI has one of the better customer support systems in case something goes wrong.

So basically just held back by crappy software. Hmm, the drivers could probably be downloaded from the vendors (plus it is the latest version).

If MSI could just gets its software together, it'd be a solid choice for everyone. I guess every company right now has that "if they could get x together".

Only things I might have wanted:
- Dual NICs, preferably by Intel
- SATA Express (as covered in review)
- Not too crazy about wifi or bluetooth

Checking the online reviews specifically, the delid die guard was made for the 4770k, Not sure if the Devils Canyon chips are covered (the configuration is somewhat different).

Click to expand...

On the driver front you can use the drivers from the vendors. My issues wasn't with the drivers themselves but rather MSI's shitty auto-installer. We test this as part of the out of the box experience. I don't actually expect anyone to really use that unless they don't have an internet connection when they build their machine or something. It's just part of the overall package really.

As Kyle pointed out their web infrastructure sucks ass. Taking 30 minutes to download a BIOS update is bullshit. We used to trash ASUS for that back in the 680i / P95 chipset days. They got their shit together on that front. Hopefully MSI will too. MSI's actually good about taking feedback and making changes they are just sometimes very slow to do so.

Hopefully they get their web infrastructure together. They've been pretty good though about releasing new BIOSes for their motherboards and for their Lightning series of GPUs. I think when the 290X Lightning had a driver issue that would cause the fans to stop spinning, they responded with 2 days with a new BIOS.

But yeah, otherwise a great motherboard. End of this month, I guess is the X99 launch, so it'll be interesting to see what the different motherboard vendors offer. MSI will be on my shortlist of top choices and I'm thinking about dishing out for the top end board, since I know I will not be upgrading this PC for a while. On the dual LAN, my guess is being an OC board they didn't make it a priority. I just wish that they had no Bluetooth or Wi-fi (I personally don't use Bluetooth, and I prefer wired internet). SATA Express though is a feature that will be missed.

Anyways they've been boasting about 32Gb/s M.2 for X99. Only Asrock has anything similar. Hopefully we'll see some SSDs that can use the bandwidth ... and hopefully be able to boot from it.

But if it's just bad software, I can put up with. Only have to download from vendor website. Bad hardware is another issue. I plan to wait until all the board makers have started releasing Revision 2.0 boards. Plus hopefully DDR4 prices will be stable by then.

Companies like ASUS, MSI And GIGABYTE figured out a long time ago that multiple NICs on gaming motherboards generally went unused. So it was a way for them to reduce their costs. There are some motherboards offered with dual NICs still but if your into network hardware then you might want to step up to actual network cards.

The onboard Intel's are good for onboard NICs. They still don't hold a candle to their server adapters.

Yeah I'd have to agree.

It seems like if you want good anything, go for the industrial.

Good fans: Go with Delta, Nidec, San Ace, etc. The AP15 Gentle Typhoon was well regarded as it was an industrial fan.

I guess good quality network cards is like that too.


On an unrelated note, they've revealed their X99 XPower a few days ago.

• It looks like it does have a SATA Express connector this time.
• 8x SATA 3.0 slots I think
• There's an M.2 covered by the heatsink of the northbridge.
• Extra molex too for multiple GPUs.
• Delid die guard won't be an issue because Haswell-E is soldered.
• Interestingly they've gone with 12 phases, down from 16. Probably not enough room on the surface.
• 2x USB 3.0 motherboard headers?

Of course 12 phases doesn't mean it's worse. If it's something like 12x IR3550, it should be more than enough to handle Haswell-E. Even better if they've gone with IR6811/IR6894 DirectFET. The power requirements are essentially double that of Haswell, I'd imagine clock for clock.

The Z87 XPower shipped with a ridiculous 32x IR3550, but it had problems at higher overclocks with RAM. Apparently it had the tendency to fry DIMMs by supplying excess volts. I think the later revisions though fixed it.

We can't see the IO plate unfortunately, so not sure what's there.

I'm expecting the motherboard makers to do some crazy stuff though for X99. EVGA for X79 I remember made a 12 layer PCB for example.