MSI Z97 MPOWER MAX AC (LGA 1150) Motherboard Review

The Test System and Test Software

Before we delve into any testing we would like to take this opportunity to review our test system and thank those sponsors who kindly provided us with test equipment to make our work possible. We offer our thanks to:

Intel for supplying us with a Core i7 4770K processor, which we reviewed here.

Kingston for supplying us with a Hyper X 3K 240GB solid state drive, which we reviewed here, and the Hyper X USB 3.0 DTHX Flash Drive, which we reviewed here.

Corsair for supplying us with a Hydro Series H100i liquid CPU cooler, which we reviewed here, and a Vengeance Pro 16GB 2400MHz memory kit, which we reviewed here.

Be Quiet for supplying us with a Straight Power E9 680W power supply unit, which we reviewed here.

Plextor for supplying us with a 256GB M.2 solid state drive, which we reviewed here.

Sapphire for supplying us with an AMD R9 290 Tri-X graphics card, which we reviewed here.

ASUS for supplying us with an RT-AC68U wireless AC gigabit router, which we reviewed here.

Patriot for supplying us with a Wildfire 120GB solid state drive, which we reviewed here.

Lian Li for supplying us with a PC-T60A test bench.

Noctua for supplying us with NT-H1 thermal compound.

Rosewill for supplying us with an Infrared thermometer.

Test System

• Motherboard: varies by review
• CPU: Intel Core i7 4770K processor
• GPU: Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X graphics card
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB 2400MHz kit (CL11, 2 x 8GB)
• Cooling: Corsair H100i with Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Compound
• Case: Lian Li PC-T60A test bench
• Storage Drives: Kingston 240GB Hyper X 3K SSD, Patriot 120GB Wildfire SSD, Kingston Hyper X 64GB USB 3.0 flash drive and Plextor 256GB M6e M.2 SSD
• PSU: Be Quiet Straight Power E9 680W
• Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit SP1
• Networking: ASUS RT-AC68U router

Test Software

• SiSoft Sandra Engineer – available here.
• WPrime – available here.
• Cinebench – available here.
• 3DMark – available here.
• Bioshock Infinite – available here.
• Tomb Raider – available here.
• AIDA 64 Engineer – available here.
• DPC Latency Analyser – available here.
• Rightmark Audio Analyser – available here.
• LAN Speed Test Lite – available here.
• Passmark – available here.