MSI Z87-G43 (LGA 1150) Motherboard Review

A Closer Look

The MSI Z87-G43 uses a dark brown PCB and has a very clean layout. I think the blue and black combination works well and looks very nice for a budget motherboard. It doesn’t strike me as looking too budget.

The CPU socket area has two independent heatsinks covering the VRM assembly as well as MSI’s Super Ferrite Chokes. A single 8 pin EPS connectors delivers the required power.

Four DIMM lanes are provided and the CPU socket has two fan connectors, spaced quite far apart.

The PCH heatsink is relatively sleek looking but also quite small and discrete which is always good to see.

We can see a pair of PCIe 16X lanes, only one is generation 3.0 speeds and the other is generation 2.0 at 4X speeds. This means AMD 2-way CFX is supported (but not really recommended as both cards will run at PCIe 2.0 4X) and Nvidia SLI is not supported. You can run dual GPU cards in the PCIe 3.0 X16 slot – such as an Nvidia GTX 690 or AMD HD 7990. 3 PCI slots and 2 PCIe 2.0 X1 slots make up the rest of the PCI connectivity. Audio is provided at the top left by Realtek ALC892.

Connectors along the bottom include front panel audio, a TPM connector, a parallel port, serial port, a system fan header, two USB 2.0 connectors and front panel connectors.

The rear I/O includes a PS/2 combo, six USB 2.0, HDMI, Gigabit ethernet, VGA, DVI-D, two USB 3.0 and 8 channel audio.

The rear of the motherboard is plain with just the screws holding the heatsinks in place and stock Intel socket backplate.