MSI Z87 Motherboard Roundup: Rockin Haswell

Like ASUS’ ROG series, MSI’s Z87 gaming motherboards have a red and black color scheme. The PCB of the MSI Z87-G45 is a sort of faint reddish black with black and metallic red accents, and the southbridge is covered with a sharp dragon logo. Perhaps surprisingly, there’s a modest assortment of heatsinks around the CPU socket; there are simply two modestly-sized passive heatsinks on the power array, although the heatsinks cleverly form that same dragon shape if you look at them sideways.
The Z87 chipset supports six SATA 6Gbps ports (and one mSATA port) as well as a total of fourteen USB ports--six USB 3.0 and eight USB 2.0.

The Z87-G45 has a Realtek ALC1150 codec that supports 7.1 channel HD audio, but MSI also loaded the board with Audio Boost, which consists of a headphone amplifier, gold-plated jacks, and audio circuitry that’s isolated from other circuits on the board to avoid interference. It also features Sound Blaster Cinema software, like the Z87I.
Around back, the Z87-G45 sports a PS/2 port, two USB 2.0, four USB 3.0, coax and optical S/PDIF, six audio jacks, and a clear CMOS button. Of the three onboard video ports, the VGA and DVI-D support max resolutions of 1920x1200, while the HDMI port can handle 4K resolutions; any two can be paired up to support a second display.


The LAN port boasts a Killer E2200 networking chip that prioritizes game traffic for low latency. In terms of gaming features, MSI also tricked out the PS/2 and USB 2.0 ports for high polling rate mice to support response times as low as 1 millisecond.
MSI didn’t include much in the box other than the manual, driver disc, quick start guide, two SATA cables, I/O shield, a gaming case badge, and a Do Not Disturb door hanger.