Overclocking
The EFI on the MSI Z87I lived up to most of the competition's latest efforts, with most of it being easy to navigate and providing all the usual settings under the OC section. There's also a pretty handy hardware monitoring section that allows you to tweak target temperatures and fan profiles while everything from current CPU temperature and frequency to RAM speed and BIOS version are all displayed on the home page.
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We applied our usual settings of 1.27V to get to our usual stable 4.7GHz with our trusty Core i7-4770K. However the CPU quickly overheated, something which is usually a sign of lacklustre power circuitry. The result was similar to the majority of LGA1150 boards we've tested so far, few of which have been happy to get to 4.7GHz, but a few have been able to push past this point. We knocked back the vcore to try 4.6GHz and bottomed out at 1.2V while providing enough juice for the system to be stable under Prime95's small FFT test. It's not a poor result by any means - just a small limitation in overclocking potential, but we are talking about a sub £100 mini-ITX motherboard here afterall.
Performance
We've seen plenty of variation in our Media Benchmarks with Z87 motherboards and the Z87I was no exception. It posted one of the better multi-tasking scores, but mediocre results in the other two tests meant it came second from bottom overall, although it was less than 200 points off the top spot - not too much of an issue. It was also fairly slow in both our game tests too, although only by a couple of frames per second.
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These results saw hefty improvements once the CPU was cranked up to 4.6GHz, although the overall score in the Media Benchmarks was actually the lowest on test. Again this was only by narrow margins, but the trend continued in the game tests too. Thankfully there's nothing to worry about where SATA speeds are concerned - read and write speeds of 536MB/sec and 501MB/sec are only a little off the pace of the fastest boards we've tested. A consolation to the performance figures is that the Z87I was one of the most power-frugal on test with both idle and load results near the top of the graphs.
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Conclusion
There are, admittedly some concessions tied in to the attractive price tag of the MSI Z87I. Performance isn't stellar at stock speed or when overclocked and layout is a bit awry in places.
However, the performance is never worryingly low and overall there's little else not to like with the Z87I. It snaps at the heels of far more expensive boards in the overclocking department and with WiFi and a great EFI all part of the package, the Z87I a very attractive proposition for a mini-ITX gaming system. The fact that it costs around £30 less than the Asus Z87I-Pro makes it particularly good value too.
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Posted by SchizoFrog - Wed Nov 06 2013 13:06
The second problem is that you very rarely compare items from the same company but at completely different price points which would give a much better comparison of what you are actually getting for the extra money if you buy premium boards. More often you compare a premium product from one company, ASUS for example against the low priced MSI board. As such it would be more than nice and very helpful to compare the ASUS Z87I-Pro against the ASUS H87I-PLUS (£91.04 Scan). However, in this instance I do understand that the Z and H boars are totally different but I hope to get the jist of my comment.
On a different note, I am assuming that onboard sound these days is perfectly good for almost all situations as there is no space to add in a soundcard with these boards, let alone other expansion cards such as a TV card.
Posted by Combatus - Wed Nov 06 2013 14:10
Firstly - good spot on the Scan price - I did actually check the OcUK price again and did a Google search (for some reason Scan isn't listed there) but they all came up with £135-145 so in that light I'm sure you can forgive me
I think you hit the nail on the head with the Asus comparison - reviewing anything less than Z87 when it comes to LGA1150 boards be it mini-ITX or any larger sizes for that matter, just isn't what we're about. Also, this and the Gigabyte and Asus mini-ITX equivalents we've looked at recently are just that - equivalents. They're all enthusiast-based boards and MSI still deserves some kudos for having a Z87-based mini-ITX board that's noticeably cheaper than Asus. Yes Asus sells cheaper examples but they still aren't comparable to the board we reviewed here, which is most likely why Asus has seen fit to offer a hefty price cut, at least where Scan is concerned.
As for comparing other items from the same company but at different price points, I think you'll find most review sites are mainly concerned with what's best for specific price points - ie, I have £100 to spend on a PC case, which one should I buy and is A) better than B)? We do very often end with a conclusion that states what you might consider if you have a little more to spend, that kind of thing and I think it's also fair to assume that most bit-tech readers will know what the differences are, for example, between Intel's Z87 chipset and the H87 chipset. However, we can certainly look at including more of this kind of advice in future!
Posted by SchizoFrog - Wed Nov 06 2013 15:51
I do understand and accept your points on why you write reviews from these perspectives and I only comment because after reading tons of reviews (I tend to read every 'internal' hardware article) I do find that I still have questions that don't get covered. For example what it is that I would not be getting if I paid under £100 for a Z87 board as opposed to the ASUS Hero. There are lots of fine details that seem to get glossed over in a review that would show up in a clear and concise way through a direct comparison.
Anyway... Carry on as you were good Sir.
Posted by [USRF]Obiwan - Wed Nov 06 2013 16:39