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UEFI Interface
After pressing the DEL key to enter the BIOS, we are greeted by an attractive looking UEFI interface. The main page features a series of large tabs which let us access the different configuration options. There is some basic information about the system and a few settings displayed in the bar along the top of the page which can be accessed at all times.
Clicking the ‘Settings' tab brings up a long list of different options which can be configured.
The ‘OC' tab is the most exciting. Here we find all the settings we could possibly ask for to squeeze the best possible performance from the motherboard.
The ‘ECO' mode button lets us configure some of the motherboard's power saving options. MSI have also included a ‘Browser' into the UEFI but we doubt many users will bother using this as it takes almost as much time to get to as booting into windows.
Under the ‘Utilities' tab there are three options; HDD Backup, Live BIOS update and the M-Flash updating utility.
The final ‘Security' tab lets us set an administrator password to protect the BIOS configuration.
Overclocking
Until recently, it hasn't really been possible to overclock mini-ITX systems due to the limitations of the power regulation circuitry. A few weeks back we reviewed the ASRock Z77E-ITX which impressed us with its overclocking prowess.
We decided to use an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU cooler to test the Z77IA-E53 as it uses a push-pin mounting mechanism and won't foul any of the components on the reverse of the motherboard. This isn't a very powerful cooler but is good enough for a moderate overclock.
For our benchmarks we used an overclock of 4.6 GHz which was achieved by raising the CPU ratio to 46x and bumping the core voltage to 1.22V. Under full load the CPU hit 87 degrees which won't cause any issues long term.
See validation here.
Ideal for a new build in the prodigy case.
Good product, I like their video cards more than their motherboards lately 🙂
I was quite interested in the on-board audio – they advertise the THX TruStudio, but it’s stil just a RealTek chip. I was planning on a Home-Theater/mini gaming rig, but the power seems to be very limited on ITX boards, which could be a problem if I want to upgrade.
Very in-depth review but would have been a lot more informative if the benchmarks were also directly compared against other mitx’s of the same chipset.