MSI Z97S SLI PLUS (LGA 1150) Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

MSI’s Z97S SLI PLUS can be had for $139.99 at Newegg and $137.99 at Amazon in the USA. Overclockers sell it for £95.99 here in the UK. A 3 year MSI warranty is provided.

Summary

I’ve been through my fair share of Z97 motherboards over the past few months, in fact the MSI Z97S SLI PLUS is my 13th Z97 motherboard review. It’s fair to say I’ve seen pretty much everything Z97 has to offer and at a core level even the cheapest Z97 motherboard offers an impressive feature set just on what the chipset alone can provide. The MSI Z97S SLI PLUS is one of the cheapest Z97 motherboards on the market, yet MSI have still found a way to add a few more things in that they really didn’t need to add for this price point. Take the extra two SATA III ports or extra two USB 3.0 ports: ASUS do not offer anything like that at this price point. This board also supports Nvidia SLI at a very attractive price point, something that is fairly unique for the Z97 market.

MSI have bundled in an incredible amount of hardware spec into this motherboard that merits further consideration to anyone building a tight-budget Z97 system. We’ve already established this board isn’t a big looker and neither is it a big performer but for the price you shouldn’t expect it to be. It certainly isn’t hideous, the blue and black colour scheme offers a reasonable aesthetic, but the brown PCB is better suited to a case without a side panel. Neither is the performance bad, but it does trail towards the back of the Z97 pack in most of our testing, however, the margin is tiny: less than 2% or so.

The conclusion to draw is that if flashy looks and top spec hardware or performance aren’t of a great concern to you then this motherboards serves a valuable purpose. In theory you can save $100 or so on getting a cheaper motherboard like this which would allow you the budget to upgrade your GPU or even go for the SLI set-up this board supports.

Pros

• Attractive pricing
• SLI support
• Extra SATA and USB controllers
• Intel Gigabit
• M.2 & SATA Express
• Retains same BIOS as MSI flagship Z97 boards

Cons

• Uninspiring looks
• Strange front panel connectors
• Performance is a little behind better Z97 boards

“MSI have always been renowned for offering the best bang for buck entry level Intel motherboards and the Z97S SLI PLUS continues that trend. A smart combination of features matched up with a tempting price tag make the Z97S SLI PLUS a strong consideration for budget system builders. Multi-GPU setups needn’t be expensive anymore.”

Thank you to MSI for providing this review sample.