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MSI Z87 XPower Motherboard Review

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SATA performance

Z87-SATA-Kingston-HyperXASMedia-SATA-Kingston-HyperX

The native Z87 SATA 6Gb/s port allows our Kingston HyperX 3K SSD to show if its full performance potential.

Unfortunately, the SATA 6Gb/s ports wired to ASMedia's ASM1061 connection show far more constrained performance. The decrease in transfer rates is related to the fact that the ASMedia chip uses a single 5Gb/s PCI-E 2.0 lane to power two SATA ports which are supposedly capable of up to 6Gb/s each.

Shown above is the importance of using the chipset's native SATA 6Gb/s ports for maximum performance. If all of the Z87 SATA ports are being utilised, we would recommend using the ASMedia connections for lower priority devices such as optical drives and mechanical HDDs.

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3 comments

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

  2. 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. 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