Motherboard Shots
There have been some layout changes and some revisions to the heat sink covering the Chipset and other areas. The system fan header is now down at the PCIe slot, and our pins were bent. There are 4 SATA instead of 5 on the older board and the heatsink is a flatter design.
One side of the DIMM slots has static memory module guides rather than latches. This prevents a clash when installing memory and graphics cards, a thoughtful touch.
The new Wi-Fi riser card is located at the bottom of back panel IO ports, moving them all up one position. You can see our bent pins just next to the CMOS clear button. Below we have the full ATX 24 pin PSU header, the USB 3.0 front panel block, the DIMM slots and the SATA connectors all tightly packed together.
Despite its size it comes with a full 8-pin EPS power connector, though the BIOS battery is in a very tricky place for removal and needs to be vertical. A tight fit but you won’t have any issues with memory and graphics meeting in the middle.
MSI Z97I GAMING AC Motherboard Review
Package - 9
Performance - 9.5
Price - 9
Consumer Experience - 9
9.1
This motherboard is aimed at gamers and it has all the right features excluding SLi. During our game tests we did not feel the need for SLi, justifying the little motherboard in its own right. You can get a GTX970 or 770, as we did, into most modern mITX Chassis, combing with this motherboard to make an excellent high end gamer rig or Steam Box.