MSI Z87 MPOWER Motherboard Preview

It’s getting even closer to the launch of the newest Intel based motherboards revolving around a brand new chipset and supporting the newest 4th generation Intel processors. With that creeping in closer day by day, we are getting ourselves prepared for the launch, especially with us also preparing to get the latest content from the upcoming show; Computex.

To help keep our readers in the loop, as much as we can without breaking NDA, we have a whole host of previews coming up, which is where we find ourselves today, looking at the upcoming boards one by one, starting with the Z87 MPOWER from MSI.

Now you may remember the MPOWER branding from their Z77 offering that we looked at back in March, and sticking with the styling and branding used there, they have merged it over to the new chipset with this latest addition.

Design wise, we see the same branding being used and from attending a MSI event in London, MSI plan to release more models within the MPOWER range, offering different price points depending on the users needs.

One thing worth noticing is the new heatsink design incorporated around the CPU socket which features a black and yellow design to merge in with the rest of the boards design.

The colour scheme also continues to the rest of the cooling with a large, low-profile passive design that covers over the new Intel chipset.

For a further look at the board and its many features, we invite you to check out the video below, where we take an unboxing look and overview of the board.

 [youtube]http://youtu.be/rc8uIpT_9YI[/youtube]

From what we’ve shown to you and from what we know we’re safe to say without annoying Intel or MSI by breaking NDA, we can honestly say that we’re big fans of the colour scheme and welcomed it when we originally saw it on Z77, so am happy to see that MSI have developed on this with the Z87 MPOWER among the other boards which we will have in the future. The colour scheme matches in nicely with the Lightning series of graphics cards and Avexir memory that was closely developed in conjunction with MSI.

The new heatsink design around the CPU socket is going to be a marmite decision for anyone, as some may see it as large and cumbersome, but others will see this as a godsend as it should (at least in theory) provide adequate cooling when needed the most, especially when pushing your hardware to the limits through overclocking. Another key area of the design that I’m keen to see, and have spoken directly to MSI about is the bareness of the PCB, especially around the CPU socket. As you will see MSI have ditched a lot of logos and lines across the board making it look at a lot cleaner and simpler for the user, which is ultimately what they planned to do thanks to a lot of R&D from the big wigs at MSI.

Feature wise, we are certainly not shocked with the specifications (which we can’t fully reveal) but with a high-end board like this, we did expect plenty of expansion lanes, SATA ports, USB 3.0 technology and mini PCI-Express/mSATA and that’s exactly what this board delivers.

All in all, from an aesthetics side of view, we are certainly keen to see how this board performs and we can honestly say that we think that you (our readers) will be excited to see the benchmarks too, and MSI really have (at least from a first glance) got an award-winning motherboard here.