Aesthetics
This is a good looking board. The red/black theme is pretty obvious and may limit some builders who are looking for a specific theme. There is red LED lighting in the audio isolation PCB channel and the power, reset and OC Genie buttons also light up at the bottom edge. Although there is an LED “AudioBoost” logo, it is mostly obscured when you have a graphics card installed. The LEDs are pretty subtle overall and the LCD display for error codes and system temperature are design agnostic. In our practical build, we had a black Cooler Master Cosmos SE case with blue LEDs and the aesthetics seemed to work well despite the red/black highlights on the motherboard.
Networking
The addition of a Killer E2200 chipset is a nice touch and the software is pretty easy to use. When testing, we isolated the test bench on our cable internet connection and played Battlefield 4, COD Advanced Warfare and CounterStrike. The software worked fine and we didn’t see any unusual lag issues. Steam downloads were prioritised lower than our games and ran in parallel to our gaming session without any noticeable impact on our ping or general game play. We tested across multiple FPS games to avoid any lag/netcode issues unique to a single title. Although the testing methodology isn’t extensive, the result was a good indication that the solution works as advertised.
Sound
After experiencing AudioBoost on the Z87M Gaming, we expected the audio solution to be good and we weren’t disappointed. We couldn’t discern the difference between AudioBoost and AudioBoost 2, nor could we tell any difference in quality with the extra power connector enabled or disabled. The ALC1150 implementation and software combination is one of the heroes of this motherboard and gave us all we could want in terms of an in-game audio experience. We tested the audio with a few different headsets and a 5.1 channel home theatre system via optical and couldn’t fault it at all. Unless you are an “Audio Nut”, there is no need for a dedicated sound card here.
MSI has delivered:
- Studio level Integrated 600Ω Headphone amplifier
- Dedicated amplified output (Red) optimised for studio-grade headgear
- Gold-plated audio jacks
- EMI shielded audio codec & amplifier
- High quality audio capacitors
- Additional power
- SoundBlaster Cinema 2 Software
MSI Command Centre
Every Motherboard manufacturer seems to have their own version of this. ASUS have AI Suite, Gigabyte has EasyTune and MSI has Command Centre. The MSI Command Centre is intuitive, allows for windows based overclocking – you wouldn’t need to go into the UEFI if you didn’t want to. Monitoring, fan control, RAMDISK, GPU Boost and other options are available through Command Centre. It even has it’s own remote server control options via an App Store or Android app for your Smartphone.
MSI Live Update
This utility is great for letting you know when there is a new version of the BIOS, driver or MSI utility available. It’s easy to use and can kick off the installation of an update for you.
