MSI Z77 MPower LGA1155 Motherboard Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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MSI Z77 MPower LGA1155 Motherboard Review - Too often you have to buy an insanely expensive board, packed with features you probably won't use in order to get high end performance and overclocking oriented features. MSI is changing that with the Z77 MPower. This board has all the performance without the unnecessary fluff.
 
I'm liking mine too. Running 4.5GHz on a 3770k @1.25V with an H100 cooler. Gets to almost 90C during IBT. It's rock stable though. Never crashes and no failures during Prime95 testing.

My overclocking experience was different though. I couldn't get the MSI Control Center to actually change the CPU clock multiplier. I had to do it in the BIOS. I think there was a setting in the BIOS to allow clock changes in Windows but that made no difference. Oh well, overclock is set now so I haven't fiddled with it in weeks.
 
I own this one and will chime in as well :) see sig for specs

I got my 3770k to 4.5GHz 1.2V with no sweat. I think I lucked out and possibly got a 3770k that the lid was done right with thermalpaste, I was afraid I was going to have to de-lid it and re-do the thermal paste but so far so good, peak I think I hit about 74c under prime load on a H100 with 4 Coolermaster R4 fans in a push pull config on a fan controller turned all the way down

I can get to 4.8GHz but still had some stability issues or BSOD but I didn't adjust some of the voltages as I should have to try and get it there. From benching on games and etc the difference between 4.5GHz and 4.8GHz was barely noticeable so to me it wasn't worth the extra heat or me having to turn my fans up higher, I like my systems quiet but powerful :)

I am still going to go back and see if I can lower the main voltage a bit and possibly up the PLL voltage a tiny bit to see if I can get temps a bit lower.

Something I didn't see mentioned in the review (sorry f I overlooked it I'm at work and get distracted easily lol) was the inclusion of Lucids VirtuGPU which supposedly allows you to use the on chip GPU with your existing GPU to give a performance boost. From reading other reviews of this tech sometimes it seemed to help, other times it hurt more so I decided not to use it

One last thing to mention to anyone and everyone. I had a MSI P67A-GD80 before this, I used SSDs in RAID 0 just as I am now... but on the GD80 when powering the system on it went through post then to each of the controllers and initialized them so on and so forth. This board however the intel RAID controller is handled directly through the BIOS so the whole system loads incredibly fast for me, even with the fast boot option disabled. I have never seen a system boot as fast in to windows as this one has, and it will only get better if and when EVGA releases a UFEI GOP fast boot compatible BIOS for my video card which should cut the time it boots up now in half. I have to time it officially but from the time I press the power button it takes about 8 or 9 seconds until I am looking at the Windows 8 start menu.
 
We haven't really covered the feature in great detail. The review is about the board itself more than anything. While that is a feature of the board it's probably something best suited to being included in GPU reviews. The feature is present on a lot of boards and should probably be evaluated on it's own as the SSD caching has been.
 
With so many boards today with up to six SATA 6.0, and 16x16 SLI, spending the money on a high end board with only TWO SATA 6.0, and only 8x8 SLI is weak.

I'd gladly pay $100 more for those two things.
 
Brantoc said:
With so many boards today with up to six SATA 6.0, and 16x16 SLI, spending the money on a high end board with only TWO SATA 6.0, and only 8x8 SLI is weak.

I'd gladly pay $100 more for those two things.
Click to expand...



6 SATA connectors works perfect for me but my only real gripe about this Z77 chipset is that I'd like all 6 to be true Intel SATA 6.0 connectors.

That way I could do a fast RAID 0 SATA 6 SSD boot with a 3TB Sata 6 for storage and another SATA 6 SSD for favorite programs and one sata for my Blue RAy DVD drive. That is only 5 sata connections being used. As it stand 2 SATA 6 is a limitation of the chipset.
 
Brantoc said:
With so many boards today with up to six SATA 6.0, and 16x16 SLI, spending the money on a high end board with only TWO SATA 6.0, and only 8x8 SLI is weak.

I'd gladly pay $100 more for those two things.
Click to expand...

You'll have to explain to me how a Z77 board can even have 6 SATA3 ports or 16x16 SLI??? Even if you put down the SATA PHY chips or the PCIE switch chips to support that on the board, all that data eventually has to go through the interfaces available on the 1155 chip that you've installed in the socket. You don't get more aggregate bandwidth by doing what you're suggesting. (But manufacturers do it anyway because "You'd gladly pay $100 more for those two things.")
 
Good review. Nice to see the UEFI lag issues being fixed. Don't know if I would have given it a silver award at the pricing tho, my ASUS P8Z77V-Lk gets me 4.6 GHz on my 3770K with very little effort and temps from 63-72C under full load folding 24/7 with a cheap Hyper 212 air cooler with ambient temps 25C or higher due to the folding farm and massive plasma TV in my 'cave'. Cost just over $100 and get similiar results from the AsRock Z77 mobo I have as well which cost even less. I'm not bashing MSI as I have a board for my Thuban which is currently awaiting repurposing, but I think I wouldn't need to spend that much for the performance offered.
 
This motherboard seems Very good so far.
Stable and decent overclocks.
Can't complain about that.

"One thing I don't like about this board is the lack of manual phase control options. You can't actually control this other than to set control to disabled or automatic" end quote from article
Wonder which setting this was must have been in hybrid power options?
 
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tyreman said:
This motherboard seems Very good so far.
Stable and decent overclocks.
Can't complain about that.

"One thing I don't like about this board is the lack of manual phase control options. You can't actually control this other than to set control to disabled or automatic" end quote from article
Wonder which setting this was must have been in hybrid power options?
Click to expand...

You'd think but nope. It's in the ECO section and you can set it phase control to "disabled" (all phases) or "auto" for the board to manage them. You can not choose beyond that.
 
Dan_D said:
You'd think but nope. It's in the ECO section and you can set it phase control to "disabled" (all phases) or "auto" for the board to manage them. You can not choose beyond that.
Click to expand...

Yes that is right
I have mine on Auto but wondered why not more there for options I forgot about it till I saw it in the review.
Thanks
 
tyreman said:
Yes that is right
I have mine on Auto but wondered why not more there for options I forgot about it till I saw it in the review.
Thanks
Click to expand...

I don't think it's a problem but I found it odd given the fact that ASUS, MSI, ASRock, etc. all give you such granular control over your power phases. You still had adjustments for frequency response times and all the other usual values though. It just seems like this board does most everything better on automatic anyway.
 
Dan_D said:
I don't think it's a problem but I found it odd given the fact that ASUS, MSI, ASRock, etc. all give you such granular control over your power phases. You still had adjustments for frequency response times and all the other usual values though. It just seems like this board does most everything better on automatic anyway.
Click to expand...


Maybe with the competitors boards we only think we are changing the power phase options they provide there.....

Maybe with competitors boards may be on an Auto setting in reality ........ even when another nomenclature is displayed

With this board no doubt that Auto as you say does an excellent job

Under hybrid digital power settings some adjustments in there for us digital compensation level, cpu core expander, cpu core switching frequency i have mine set
 
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" It features everything a performance oriented motherboard needs, but without all the unnecessary fluff which often comes with high end boards."

"this is easily the best MSI board I've worked with to date."

"The board had stability and though the feature set took an almost minimalist approach everything worked as advertised."

"At no point did I encounter quirks or problems during all my testing"

If this was said about an ASUS board on here it would have a Gold award, just saying.
 
SpongeBob said:
" It features everything a performance oriented motherboard needs, but without all the unnecessary fluff which often comes with high end boards."

"this is easily the best MSI board I've worked with to date."

"The board had stability and though the feature set took an almost minimalist approach everything worked as advertised."

"At no point did I encounter quirks or problems during all my testing"

If this was said about an ASUS board on here it would have a Gold award, just saying.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't say that's true. Lots of great ASUS boards only got Silver awards. The P8Z77-M Pro didn't get an award at all.
 
Excellent review (as always) of the MSI Z77 MPower LGA1155 Motherboard.

Small typo on overclocking page: "4.82GHz (100.52 x 42) DDR3 1608MHz" obviously should be x48 multiplier.

Thanks for the review.
 
If only.it supported 3 way sli/crossfire....then id be all up for replacing my p67a-gd65 when i upgrade the little 2100...
 
rdqlus said:
I'm liking mine too. Running 4.5GHz on a 3770k @1.25V with an H100 cooler. Gets to almost 90C during IBT. It's rock stable though. Never crashes and no failures during Prime95 testing.

My overclocking experience was different though. I couldn't get the MSI Control Center to actually change the CPU clock multiplier. I had to do it in the BIOS. I think there was a setting in the BIOS to allow clock changes in Windows but that made no difference. Oh well, overclock is set now so I haven't fiddled with it in weeks.
Click to expand...

Don't y have to have msi click bios II software installed to make those changes in windows on the control center?
 
Great review! Im looking to get this board... how do you think it will fair with an i5 2500k? Im hoping to get my chip up to 5.4 ghz ez.
 
babochee said:
Great review! Im looking to get this board... how do you think it will fair with an i5 2500k? Im hoping to get my chip up to 5.4 ghz ez.
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5.4??? EZ??? Good luck on any mb. If you have golden 2500k and sub ambient temp cooling then you can probably make it happen. 5GHZ sounds more reasonable with decent air or water cooling.
 
Just built a system around this motherboard (thanks for the budget bump, awesome wife!) and have been happy as a clam. The black board against the black holding area in my 800D looks classy. One click overclocked my 3570K to 4.2Ghz (where I'm staying... for now). She's been absolutely stable and a treat to look at. The only thing that had me potentially looking elsewhere was the ASUS Sabertooth Z77, but only for the four USB 2.0 ports on back. I'm glad I saved money and went this route.

An MSI board hasn't come near my house since a three-ring RMA circus in the nForce2 days, so investing money here was a big gamble. So far, it's been a good gamble to have taken.
 
I had a msi mb catch fire a while back and after looking at reviews for this board I decided I would purchase it for my new computer. haha so far so good but I am having little problems but its probably the user not the hardware.
 
I had a problem over clocking BCLK with the official 17.6 BIOS.
Also this mother board has problems over clocking Samsung ram which feature HYKO IC. HYKO IC is found on the Samsung Green cheap kits that are famous for being cheap and over clocking to insane speeds.
 
I contacted MSI technical support and they were unable to explain what changes may have changed the BCLK over clocking ability between the BIOS updates.


I just figured out the change.

In over clocking settings in the past I always left the cpu mulitplier set in OS enabled. Before 17.6 no problems. So now I disable that and I am able over clock BCLK from BIOS again. I don't use the Window Over clock utility.

Proof.

http://valid.canardpc.com/2669476 :)
 
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