A Closer Look
MSI’s Z87I Gaming AC has a rather strange layout. The SATA ports and front panel connectors are where we’d expect to see the CPU 8 pin, while the 24 pin is where we’d expect to see the CPU fan headers. The CPU socket is also offset more towards the PCIe lanes than the top of the motherboard while the 8 pin placement makes it so that you have to have cables going across your motherboard – not ideal for a clean build.
Most of the time it isn’t worth looking underneath motherboards as there isn’t much to see. However, with mini-ITX there’s often a wealth of components that couldn’t be squeezed on top underneath. With MSI’s Z87I Gaming AC motherboard we can see that this is the case.
Looking at the rear I/O we can see all those ports I mentioned earlier:
- 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo port
- 1 x Clear CMOS button
- 2 x USB 2.0 ports
- 4 x USB 3.0 ports
- 1 x Optical S/PDIF OUT connector
- 1 x RJ45 LAN jack
- 2 x Antenne connectors
- 1 x eSATA port
- 6 x OFC audio jacks
- 1 x DVI-I port
- 1 x HDMI port
- 1 x DP port
This is how the motherboard looks with the WiFi Antennae fitted. For anyone who is wondering, no the antennae do not block any ports when facing upright.
Here we can see the multi-connectivity card more closely, it sits in a half-size mini-PCIe slot.
The heatsink bares the MSI Dragon. We can also see those five SATA 6G ports, the USB 3.0 header, 24 pin motherboard power, front panel connectors and CPU 8 pin. As mentioned already the layout is strange, especially for the SATA ports. However, you have to consider that many mini-ITX cases will actually benefit from this seemingly unconventional layout as the motherboards are mounted facing upright and cables can rise up from each side except the back. Note the BitFenix Prodigy’s layout for example.
Near the rear I/O we find the CMOS battery mounted upright behind the heatsink which has the CPU 8 pin next to it and six CPU power phases.
We can also see a modestly sized heat pipe connecting the chipset’s PCH heatsink to the CPU VRM one. It appears to be a 6mm heat pipe.
The audio section is located by the PCIe X16 lane. We can see the shielded audio codec inside the audio boost casing with the audio capacitors and headphone amplifiers surrounding it.
The PCIe x16 lane supports Gen 3 speeds and is going to be your main source of GPU grunt, even if you have a hefty backplate it should not interfere with anything.
Finally we have the two DIMM lanes which open only at one end, the right end. This is to prevent conflict with the PCIe lane.
I recently cobbled a mini ITX system together for myself with spare parts I had lying about some of which included a Bitfenix Prodigy case, a MSI R9 290 GFX, i5 4670K CPU and an Asus Z87 Gryphon mobo, a reasonably decent gaming build you’ll agree. While everything worked fine (it was a pain in the ass to hide the full length PSU cables) it all ran far too hot for my liking especially the GFX which reached a toasty and cacophonous 92 deg under testing. Needless to say I disassembled it, packed everything away in their boxes again and returned to my tried and tested ATX system. Mini ITX makes sense in a lot of ways especially in the HTPC arena but it’s not everybody’s cuppa tea and definitely not mine, I’m a gamer at heart.
That’s more to do with the R9 290 being a hot card tbh… if you used GTX 780 you’;d get much better temps I think 😛
It is a very hot running card at the best of times made even worse in small enclosures, add that to the fact that my sample used a reference cooler. On an open test bench I recorded temps of ~ 83 deg. The temps could probably be improved a bit with a quality and correctly applied TIM. Don’t get me wrong, I like the mini ITX form factor but they have their limitations.
BTW. I liked the review. Thanks.
I agree the form factor is limited but what you can do with the form factor seems to be improving significantly every year…it wasn’t THAT long ago that we could only get Atom CPUs in the ITX form factor and the only cases that were available were hideous enterprise-style boxes. I think anyone building an ITX system from scratch (and out of their own money 😉 ) is likely to use an Nvidia card GTX 750Ti-GTX 780Ti depending on budget. And thanks, glad you liked it.
I run an i7-4770K, with the MSI Gaming AC Mini itx board and a EVGA GTX 760 w/ACX in a bitfenix. My temps are perfectly fine. I think its the R9 290. I’ve heard they run really hot
Amazing really, especially when you will learn it still has a fully fetched PCIe x16 slot, KillerNIC Gigabit Ethernet, WIFI, USB 3.0 and heck even four SATA 6 Gbps ports. To make things even tastier we pair it with a GeForce GTX 760 GAMING ITX graphics card, and the combo… well it’s just awesome. http://num.to/457-287-619-226