Home / Tech News / Featured Announcement / MSI Z87 XPower Motherboard Review

MSI Z87 XPower Motherboard Review

Luke Hill July 12, 2013 Featured Announcement, Motherboard

Rating: 8.5.

MSI is aiming for all-out performance with its flagship LGA 1150 motherboard – the Z87 XPower. Can the 32 phase VRM, overclocking-orientated features, host of add-on controllers, and support for 4-way graphics configurations give MSI's Z87 XPower motherboard success in the enthusiast sector?

Adamant to make a stake in the ultra high-end motherboard scene, MSI stuffs its XL-ATX Z87 XPower with features that will have extreme overclockers and enthusiast-grade gamers filled with excitement. 32 VRM phases powered by a DigitALL PWM controller, over-sized voltage regulation heatsinks, V-check points, onboard overclocking buttons, and MSI Military Class 4 components have the overclocking options covered.

But MSI isn't aiming for a board that can deliver high CPU frequencies without doing much else. Support for 4-way SLI and CrossFire configurations via a PEX 8747 switch, ten SATA 6Gb/s ports, WiFi and bluetooth connectivity, a high-grade audio chip, and Killer's E2205 network controller prove that an all-round king of motherboards is what MSI wants to achieve with its Z87 XPower.

The specifications sheet looks promising, as does the yellow and black colour scheme, but is MSI's Z87 XPower able to prove its worth whilst being put through our tests today?

main-image

Features:

  • Supports DDR3-3000(OC) Memory
  • 32 Phase DigitALL Power Design
  • 4-way Multi-GPU: 4-way NVIDIA SLI & AMD CrossFire Support
  • OC Certified: Military Class Burn-in Test Passed
  • Military Class 4: Top Quality & Stability
  • OC Genie 4: Overclock in 1 Second
  • Click BIOS 4: Easily Fine-tune Your System
  • PCI Express Gen 3: World's 1st PCI Express Gen 3 Motherboard Brand
  • Audio Boost: Reward Your Ears with True Quality
  • Killer Ethernet: Kill Your Lag
  • Sound Blaster X-Fi MB3: Amazing Headphone Surround & Gaming Sound Enhancement
  • Lucid Virtu MVP 2.0: Uncompromised Game Response Performance
  • Wi-Fi 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0, Intel® Wireless Display

Become a Patron!

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Tags

Check Also

Games Emulation

KitGuru Games: The Best Console is the One in Your Pocket

Emulation is the saving grace of the video games industry. Despite its controversial nature, the technology will be the only way in which all games are preserved for the future – free from licensing agreements and other such nonsense. Better still is the fact that in a majority of cases, emulation allows for a more accurate recreation of the game’s original experience than official offerings, due to countless complex shaders, filters and tweakable settings. And the best part? Thanks to the progression of technology, your humble smartphone is able to do all this and more – giving you the power of 10,000 games in the palm of your hand.

3 comments

  1. Stevie
    July 12, 2013 at 4:19 pm

    that is one big big mobo! lovely design, I like their boards this generation, very attractive designs.

  2. Andy
    July 12, 2013 at 4:20 pm

    been wondering about this board since it was announced. Id like to see a review of some of the maximum boards soon too. this MSI board is on my shortlist.

  3. Lance
    July 12, 2013 at 4:22 pm

    They make the sexiest boards but gigabyte Z87 are giving them a run for their money this time. Its a kick ass board, but im not moving to haswell, its a sucky generation. waiting on the next one, quite happy with my 3570k

© Copyright 2025, Kitguru.net All Rights Reserved Standard Terms

We've noticed that you are using an ad blocker.

Thank you for visiting KitGuru. Our news and reviews teams work hard to bring you the latest stories and finest, in-depth analysis.

We want to be as informative as possible – and to help our readers make the best buying decisions. The mechanism we use to run our business and pay some of the best journalists in the world, is advertising.

If you want to support KitGuru, then please add www.kitguru.net to your ad blocking whitelist or disable your adblocking software. It really makes a difference and allows us to continue creating the kind of content you really want to read.

It is important you know that we don’t run pop ups, pop unders, audio ads, code tracking ads or anything else that would interfere with the KitGuru experience. Adblockers can actually block some of our free content, such as galleries!