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.
Everybody (well almost everybody) would rather have top of the range mobo’s, smartphones, GFX cards etc. but products like these are the volume sellers. Without products like this, companies wouldn’t exist. If I had to pay for my computer stuff, this would be the kind of board I’d buy. There’s nothing wrong with it.
So true, I’m actually seriously considering this. The run-of-the-mill boards are what makes a manufacturer’s success. Sure we’d all love to get all the shenanigans, but money is not growing on trees yet, so we make do.
“Built around MSI’s tried-and-tested Military Class 4 components” What a joke this is, there is no ML STD anymore and there sure isn’t any “class 4” The electronics manufacturing world follows IPC standards. Military falls under class 3 requirements. “Whereas Class 3 products demand continued high performance or performance-on-demand is critical and equipment downtime cannot be tolerated, the end use environment may be uncommonly harsh, and the equipment must function when required, such as life support or other critical systems” I am a certified IPC specialist, and can tell you that it does likely meet the class 3 military spec, BUT so does almost every other manufacturer. I wish guys doing reviews would start to take note of this “class 4” BS. It’s false and should be noted.
I appreciate your feedback. I’d be interested to read more and question our MSI representatives on it. Could you provide the relative links to the IPC standard descriptions?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPC_(electronics) best I can do, I cant find any free link that details the standards. basically class 1 is it just has to work, class 2 is where continued performance and extended life are required and for which uninterrupted service is desired, but not critical. I already posted class 3. Here you can see the IPC cert on MSI’s web page. http://www.msi.com/html/product/ipc/DMS/index.html Click manufacture tab and bottom of page.
you don’t know what you’re taking about
expert, can you provide us with the criteria and source for a military class 4 designation ? It seems made up 🙂