Designed with the Intel Z97 chipset, Z97 MPOWER brings affordability to overclocking. Featuring MSI’s Military Class components and much more!
Product on Review Z97 MPOWER
Manufacturer & Sponsor: MSI
Street Price: £125 GBP / $189 USD
It goes without saying that overclocking has vast become a popular practise for devoted hardware enthusiasts. In recent times hardware vendors have been specifically designing their products to be tweaked in this fashion and today we are to take a look at a motherboard which fuses these advanced overclocking tools with affordability.
MSI has had a strong presence within the overclocking scene – backing a number of professional Overclockers and projecting them to modification stardom. Their OC division of motherboards has built a prominent name in this industry. Z97 MPOWER is one such offering from the OC series which, as its name suggests features the Intel Z97 chipset.
MPOWER is almost identical to its bigger brother – the costly XPOWER but has a small selection of features omitted and is down-sized to the ATX form factor in a bid to allow those on a tighter budget the delight of overclocking.
About MSI
Micro-Star International Co., Ltd (MSI) was established in August 1986 by 5 founders, one of the world’s largest information technology manufacturers.
MSI started from the motherboard and graphics card industries and extended into consumer and commercial electronics including notebooks, All-in-One PCs, servers, workstations, industrial PCs, household appliances, car infotainment products, barebone systems, multimedia, communication devices, and others.
MSI holds itself responsible not only to its clients, employees and stockholders, but also to the society and environment as a whole to consistently fulfill its corporate commitment.
With innovation and style as its core value, customer satisfaction and premium service as its goal, MSI will definitely be the most brilliant star in the global brands!
MSI started from the motherboard and graphics card industries and extended into consumer and commercial electronics including notebooks, All-in-One PCs, servers, workstations, industrial PCs, household appliances, car infotainment products, barebone systems, multimedia, communication devices, and others.
MSI holds itself responsible not only to its clients, employees and stockholders, but also to the society and environment as a whole to consistently fulfill its corporate commitment.
With innovation and style as its core value, customer satisfaction and premium service as its goal, MSI will definitely be the most brilliant star in the global brands!
Technical Specifications
CPU Support
Supports 4th and 5th Generation Intel® Core™ Processors, and Intel® Pentium® and Celeron® Processors for Socket LGA1150
Chipset
Intel® Z97 chipset
Memory Support
Supports DDR3 3000(OC)/ 2800(OC)/ 2666(OC)/ 2600(OC)/ 2400(OC)/
2200(OC)/ 2133(OC)/ 2000(OC)/ 1866(OC)/ 1600/ 1333/ 1066 MHz
up to 32GB
Multi-GPU Support
2 Way NVIDIA SLI / 3 Way AMD CrossFire
Display Outputs
1x HDMI port, 1x DisplayPort
Expansion Slots
4x PCIE x16 slots, 3x PCIE x1 slots
Storage
6x SATA 6Gb/s (SATA1~SATA6) ports by Intel® Z97, 2x SATA 6Gb/s (SATA7~SATA8) ports by Asmedia 1061, Support PCIE M.2 Storage by Intel® Z97 (switch from SATA5~SATA6)
Networking
Supports LAN 10/100/1000 Fast Ethernet by Intel® Z97
Audio
Chip integrated by Realtek® ALC1150, Flexible 8-channel audio with jack sensing, Compliant with Azalia 1.0 Spec
Connectivity
4x USB 3.0 ports by Intel® Z97, 4x USB 3.0 ports by ASM1074
Form Factor
ATX Form Factor
Warranty
3 Year Manufacturer Warranty
Supports 4th and 5th Generation Intel® Core™ Processors, and Intel® Pentium® and Celeron® Processors for Socket LGA1150
Chipset
Intel® Z97 chipset
Memory Support
Supports DDR3 3000(OC)/ 2800(OC)/ 2666(OC)/ 2600(OC)/ 2400(OC)/
2200(OC)/ 2133(OC)/ 2000(OC)/ 1866(OC)/ 1600/ 1333/ 1066 MHz
up to 32GB
Multi-GPU Support
2 Way NVIDIA SLI / 3 Way AMD CrossFire
Display Outputs
1x HDMI port, 1x DisplayPort
Expansion Slots
4x PCIE x16 slots, 3x PCIE x1 slots
Storage
6x SATA 6Gb/s (SATA1~SATA6) ports by Intel® Z97, 2x SATA 6Gb/s (SATA7~SATA8) ports by Asmedia 1061, Support PCIE M.2 Storage by Intel® Z97 (switch from SATA5~SATA6)
Networking
Supports LAN 10/100/1000 Fast Ethernet by Intel® Z97
Audio
Chip integrated by Realtek® ALC1150, Flexible 8-channel audio with jack sensing, Compliant with Azalia 1.0 Spec
Connectivity
4x USB 3.0 ports by Intel® Z97, 4x USB 3.0 ports by ASM1074
Form Factor
ATX Form Factor
Warranty
3 Year Manufacturer Warranty
Packaging & First Look
Packaging arrives with the black and yellow theme
Since the MPOWER series belongs to MSI’s overclocking category, our motherboard arrives in a large black and yellow box. This theme is recognised as MSI’s chosen scheme for this calibre of motherboard and helps to significantly diversify from other brands.
Around the back of this box there are further details concerning the critical feature-set of MPOWER.
The included items within the bundle
Opening the box up, there are plenty of included items bundled with MPOWER. These include the following:
• Documentation: User Guide, OC Guide, Software Guide, Quick Start
• Software CD
• SLI Bridge: 2-way
• 6x SATA 3 (6G) cables
• Rear IO shield
• V-Check cables
• Quick connect adapter
• Drive labels
• Case badge
• Door hanger
MPOWER is adorned in stealthy aesthetics
MPOWER is easily distinguished from other motherboards due to the black and yellow theme which is now synonymous with MSI’s overclocking products. The styling is rather engaging, it catches the eye and we applaud MSI for their efforts – it’s obvious that much thought has gone into the production of this motherboard. The PCB has been adorned with a matt black finish and all of the ports and slots are also black.
MSI has chosen to stick with the standard ATX form factor for MPOWER, unlike other motherboards in the OC series which use E-ATX. This will please those with smaller cases that still want to have access to a Z97 motherboard which focusses on overclocking.
Closer Look
12-Phase DigitALL Power Design
Around the socket, MSI has placed a combination of three burly heatsinks which are all interconnected via a copper heatpipe. These heatsinks cover the MOSFETs/VRM. MPOWER uses a 12Phase DigitALL Power Design to ensure pinpoint accuracy for voltage delivery. Combining this and the 12-pin EPS (CPU) power and the recipe for a good overclocker is certainly there. MSI uses Military Class 4 components throughout, which include HI-C CAPs, Dark CAPs and SFCs.
MPOWER is designed with LGA1150 and thus coincides with Intel’s 4th Generation and 5th Generation CPUs including the current ‘Haswell Refresh’ SKUs.
Plethora of features around the memory slots
MPOWER has four DIMM slots which support dual channel DDR3. This motherboard can accommodate up to 3300 (OC) and a maximum capacity of 32GB. As expected, Intel XMP is available too.
In the memory region MSI has positioned the V-Check points socket and two 4-pin fan headers. The V-Check allows advanced users to accurately monitor voltage via a multimeter.
Up to eight SATA 3 ports
Further along the motherboard there are a total of eight SATA 3 (6GB/s) ports for storage and a single USB 3.0 header port which is right-angled.
Large Intel Z97 heatsink
Behind the SATA ports and covering the Intel Z97 chip is a distinct and substantial heatsink. MSI has given the heatsink the “M” design to signify MPOWER.
In the bottom corner of MPOWER there is an LED debug panel for diagonising potential problems during POST. On the far left of the picture above there is a fast boot button which allows the user to boot directly into the BIOS without having to hit the “DEL” key on the keyboard – ideal if you have the board on a test bench. Next to this button is a BIOS switch, allowing you to move to and from a secondary BIOS. MSI has also included a “Slow” switch which resolves bootup issues that some high overclocks can present when booting into windows.
Multi-GPU support and much more!
In the graphics card department, MPOWER excels by supporting up to four solutions.
MSI has given MPOWER the following slots:
– 4x PCI Express 3.0 X16 slots
Operating at: x16 / x8 + x8 or x8 + x8 +x4
– 3x PCI Express 2.0 X1 slots
Additionally, there is an auxiliary PCI-E power socket to assist with delivering more juice, since a configuration of four graphics cards is extremely demanding upon the system.
In between the bottom two PCI Express X16 slots MSI has integrated an M.2 slot for use with an M.2 Solid State Drive. SATA ports 5 and 6 cannot be used if an M.2 drive is installed but users can enjoy up to 10Gb/s transfer rates.
Onto the topic of audio, MSI are using Audio Boost 2 on MPOWER.
Audio Boost 2 physically isolates the audio PCB for lower interference and makes use of a dedicated power interface to ensure that it’s both more powerful and stable. In addition to the standard 7.1 analogue output GAMING-series motherboards are bundled with Creative Sound Blaster Cinema 2 software, boosting simulated surround-sound to headphones and headsets for more immersive gameplay.
USB Audio Power ensures a consistent 5V supply to the rear USB ports, even under the heavy draw a device such as a USB DAC would cause. A significant long-term weakness for USB, is great to see MSI and others address the quality of power being delivered to external peripherals.
Dual built-in amplifiers improve audio clarity to headphones of up to 600-ohm impedance, headphones which can be hooked up to either the back panel or chassis audio ports. High quality Nichicon Japanese Capacitors are specially designed for audio and enable the best possible filtering for high-end acoustics. Finally, golden audio connectors should increase long-term durability and signal quality.
Along the very bottom of the motherboard there are also some advanced features for Overclockers including:
OC Genie 4: Allows a one-second overclock (can switch between two settings)
Direct OC buttons: On-the-fly overclocking (Multi or Baseclock)
V-Checkpoints 2: Voltages can be read by up to three multimeters
OC switches: Enabling/disabling specific OC features
Plenty of USB 3.0 ports on the rear IO panel
Lastly we focus attention on the rear IO panel, this particular area has quite an assortment of USB 3.0 ports which is great to see. In this area we have the following:
– 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo port
– 1 x Clear CMOS button
– 1 x Optical S/PDIF-out port
– 4 x USB 2.0 ports
– 6 x USB 3.0 ports
– 1 x RJ45 LAN jack
– 1 x 6 in 1 OFC audio jack
– 1 x DisplayPort with max. resolution up to 4096×2304@24Hz
– 1 x HDMI ports with max. resolution up to 4096×2304@24Hz
MSI OC UEFI Video Tour
Below is a video tour showing the interface of MSI’s OC UEFI BIOS and the options which are available. As you can see, this video was taken with the XPOWER AC which we also reviewed some months previously – the BIOS is exactly the same for XPOWER and MPOWER so there was no need to produce another video for this.
As you can see, the BIOS is exceptionally fluid and different options are in easy to reach locations. Having such an intuitive interface makes the whole experience much more pleasurable – Overclockers will find it fast and effective.
Test Setup, Methodology & Overclocking
Test Setup
CPU Intel Core i7 4770K (Haswell) 3.50GHz
Cooling Corsair Hydro Series H105
Motherboard Z97 MPOWER
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance Pro 2800MHz CL12 DDR3
Graphics XFX R7970 Black Edition
Storage Corsair Neutron GTX 480GB
PSU Corsair HX1050 80 Plus Gold Certified PSU
Cooling Corsair Hydro Series H105
Motherboard Z97 MPOWER
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance Pro 2800MHz CL12 DDR3
Graphics XFX R7970 Black Edition
Storage Corsair Neutron GTX 480GB
PSU Corsair HX1050 80 Plus Gold Certified PSU
Benchmarks
Cinebench R15 – CPU/OpenGL Score
x264 HD 4.0 – 1st and 2nd pass encoding
SiSoftware SANDRA 2014 – CPU & Memory benchmarks
AIDA64 – CPU benchmarks
PCMark 8 – Home Suite
3DMark FireStrike – DX11 3D Benchmark
Games – Tomb Raider, THIEF
x264 HD 4.0 – 1st and 2nd pass encoding
SiSoftware SANDRA 2014 – CPU & Memory benchmarks
AIDA64 – CPU benchmarks
PCMark 8 – Home Suite
3DMark FireStrike – DX11 3D Benchmark
Games – Tomb Raider, THIEF
Other Software
Temperature Analysis: Core Temp
Stress Testing Software: LinX
CPU Specification Monitoring: CPU-Z
Stress Testing Software: LinX
CPU Specification Monitoring: CPU-Z
Overclocking
Since the introduction of Z87 back in 2013, there has been a return to BCLK overclocking. This type of functionality ensures flexibility for Overclockers compared to previous generations were the BCLK was locked to 100MHz and only the ratio could be adjusted. As many of you will know, Haswell CPUs get very hot with little voltage increase therefore the flexibility and headroom for overclocking can be limited. For the Z97 launch, we are testing with the Intel Core i7-4770K which from previous, extensive testing, has a maximum overclock of 4.6GHz.
Since 4.8GHz is the maximum overclock for 4790K our investigation takes us to trying to achieve this or a reasonably close achievement. Whilst we could boot into Windows with 4.8GHz, we encountered problems when the system was fully loaded so we began dropping the frequency with the voltage at around 1.43v. Once again, 4.7GHz gave us similar results – the temperatures with 1.43v were entering the 90C region – something to be regarded as an absolute maximum for the longevity of the chip. So we eventually settled at 4.6GHz with the voltage just over the 1.4v mark. This result gave us reasonable temperatures and can be regarded as a notable achievement.
Benchmarks: Power Consumption
It’s interesting to note the power consumption across all motherboards. Although they are using Z97 chipsets, energy results can fluctuate between manufacturers due to the features and specifications that are integrated. First of all, for the idle tests the system is cold booted into Windows and no additional applications are executed – the watts are noted on the external energy monitor we use and then the system is loaded with 3DMark FireStrike – watts are again monitored for the duration of the test and the highest rated wattage result is then noted down. Below are the results of this energy test.
Benchmarks: X264 HD
Simply put, this test measures how fast your machine can encode a short, DVD quality MPEG-2 video clip into a high-quality x264 video clip. What’s x264, you ask? It’s more or less the next-generation Xvid/DivX codec. I think it’s ideal for a benchmark because the application (x264.exe) reports fairly accurate compression results (in frames per second) for each pass of the video encoding process, and it uses multi-core processors very efficiently.
Benchmarks: AIDA64
AIDA64 Product PageThis simple integer benchmark focuses on the branch prediction capabilities and the misprediction penalties of the CPU. It finds the solutions for the classic “Queens problem” on a 10 by 10 sized chessboard. At the same clock speed theoretically the processor with the shorter pipeline and smaller misprediction penalties will attain higher benchmark scores. For example — with HyperThreading disabled — the Intel Northwood core processors get higher scores than the Intel Prescott core based ones due to the 20-step vs 31-step long pipeline. CPU Queen test uses integer MMX, SSE2 and SSSE3 optimizations.
Benchmarks: Cinebench
CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s animation software CINEMA 4D 3D content creation.
Benchmarks: SiSoftware SANDRA
SANDRA isn’t always a benchmark that is included in hardware reviews but I believe it shouldn’t be ignored. SANDRA provides a vigorous package that tests your system in a rather large array of benchmarks. There are many aspects of benchmark that can be executed. We will be considering – CPU and memory tests.
Benchmarks: 3DMark
3DMark FireStrike Product PageFire Strike is our new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is our most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today. Fire Strike will only be available in the Windows editions of 3DMark initially.
Benchmarks: PCMark 8
PCMark 8 combines performance benchmarking with battery life measurement and includes tests based on popular Adobe and Microsoft applications. Whether you are looking for long battery life, or maximum power, PCMark 8 will help you find the devices that offer the perfect combination of efficiency and performance for your needs. It’s the complete PC performance benchmark for home and business.
Benchmarks: Tomb Raider & THIEF
It’s important for us to perform a number of game benchmarks as well as the synthetic tests because gamers will want to know if there are any significant benefits. So here we have two popular and recent gaming titles which feature a dedicated benchmark tool within them to display results.
Conclusion
Having already reviewed MSI’s flagship overclocking motherboard – XPOWER AC, we can certainly see an almost identical visual appearance and feature-set between the two offerings. In the MPOWER, MSI has trimmed down XPOWER with only a few features omitted and a standardised ATX form factor.
The feature-set along with attractive accessories bundle makes for a very resourceful motherboard. Enthusiasts and Overclockers will certainly be satisfied by the abundance of high-class components and advanced tools for modifying the system.
Although we might sound biased, the black and yellow theme is very pleasing to the eye. Care has quite obviously been taken to present an aesthetically pleasing piece of kit. The visual appearance of a motherboard is now a rather important factor for motherboard design. So much so that this era of styling has pushed brands to outdoing their rivals by creating the sleekest and individual designs as best they can – MSI has created an iconic design with their OC series, carving out their own identity.
Visuals aside, MPOWER performs consistently regardless of the benchmark. Throughout the testing our motherboard demonstrated excellent performance in a range of different scenarios and achieving a substantial overclock is easy thanks to the efficient UEFI BIOS.
MPOWER is furnished with just about every feature the avid enthusiast or overclocker could ever want and MSI has carefully placed specific features in easy to reach areas to also cater for users who plan to install the motherboard on a test bench.
The pricing is perhaps one of the most appealing aspects of MPOWER because this motherboard offers great “bang for buck”. MPOWER is available for a mere £125 GBP / $189 USD – which, for a motherboard of this calibre is great value for money.
Backed by MSI’s iconic OC series livery, the MPOWER not only looks the business but is packed with a strong lineup of high-end overclocking features. It’s rare to find such a capable motherboard at this cost and we urge anyone in the market for an Intel Z97 board to look no further.
Pros
+ Appealing to the eye
+ Plenty in the accessories pack
+ Consistently good performance
+ Advanced overclocking features
+ M.2 included
+ Up to 4-way SLI/CrossfireX
+ Military Class 4 components
+ Easy to use and attractive BIOS
+ Affordable
Cons
– None!
+ Appealing to the eye
+ Plenty in the accessories pack
+ Consistently good performance
+ Advanced overclocking features
+ M.2 included
+ Up to 4-way SLI/CrossfireX
+ Military Class 4 components
+ Easy to use and attractive BIOS
+ Affordable
Cons
– None!
Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.
