MSI Z97A Gaming 6 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.

Test System

• Motherboard varies by review
• CPU: Intel Core i7 5960X
• GPU: Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X graphics card
• RAM: Crucial 32GB 2133MHz DDR4
• Cooling: Thermaltake Water 3.0 AIO with Gelid GC-Extreme
• Case: Lian Li T80 Test Bench
• Storage Drives: Main storage: Crucial M550 512GB, Test Devices: SanDisk Extreme Pro 240GB SSD, Plextor 256GB M6e M.2 SSD and Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 256GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive
• PSU: Be Quiet Power Zone 1000W
• Operating System: Windows 8.1 64-bit
• 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
• Latencymon – available here
• Rightmark Audio Analyser – available here
• LAN Speed Test Lite – available here
• Passmark – available here

All tests are conducted three times and the average taken to use in our charts.