MSI Z87 XPower

[Raudi_]

So I was looking at motherboards a week or so ago and saw that the XPower was on sale for 60% off on Newegg and thought "Hey this might be a nice board if I went Devils Canyon." I did look at the reviews to see why it had such a low rating and it was mostly BIOS issues from the looks of it. So about 3 days passed and I ended up placing the order for the XPower board and wanted 1 day shipping which turned into 3 days. I received the board last Thursday and immediately took it out of the box and took some photos of it.

   My first thought when I was holding the board was, "Holy hell this thing is big and has some weight to it!" I started to look around on the board and noticed it had 1 mSATA port, a BCLK speed stepping switch (.1/1MHz) for on the fly BCLK adjustments, it had the "Ceasefire" switches which was the the PCI-E disable switches. It has a switch labeled OC, but I haven't found out what it does yet. It also has dual BIOS which in togged VIA a switch near the chipset heatsink. Some things I did like about this board is it had 4-Way SLI and Crossfire support VIA a PLX Chip, the 32Phase Power delivery, 10 total SATA III ports(4 VIA 2 different AsMedia Controllers), Post Code LED Read out, and finally all of the USB 3.0 Ports on the Rear I.O.

I got around to testing the board to make sure it would post which it did. Afterwards I got a quick shot of just my NH-D14 Installed with the board on in my case before getting around to installing everything. 

 After I got everything installed, I first went into the Boards BIOS to see what it was like and I felt like I was in another world at first until I was noticing were things were and how they worked. It is overwhelming to say the least at first glance. It has alot of overclocking settings that I can't even begin to list(Might post BIOS  Screenshots later). I finished poking around in the BIOS did a new install of Windows, and noticed that the Killer E2200 NIC wasn't working at first to I grabbed the driver disk and see if it would install the driver, and behold its a driver that does not work with windows 8.1 at all. It wouldn't even install no matter the compatibility mode.  I was pretty annoyed about it at first but then said "eh, I'll just download them on my mom's laptop" Updated the BIOS and installed the E2200 drivers and restarted, well the BIOS update for some reason broke the windows install. So I did another re-install, and finally got everything updated and running. Some of the software is sorta confusing at first but pretty easy to navagte and figure out with some Googling. The MSI Command Center for the XPower board has some really nice controls in windows which is very nice. I like the LiveUpdate 6 tool that they have since it actually works unlike Asus "EZ Update" which seems to never work.

MSI Command Center Screenshots(Click the imgur link to the Album)
http://imgur.com/a/z3hHz


So overall the XPower Board is one I was glad I took the risk of buying, I have been able to run less voltage for my normal 4.3GHz 24/7 OC making my peak temp be 67C, plus its a very nice and extremely well built board. Would I recommend it to someone? Honestly no unless you needed the additional overclocking features that the board has or just want something extremely overkill. 

Please if you have any further questions about the board just ask and I will do my best to answer them.

 

[DildorTheDecent]

super nice. 

 

I think MSIs OC boards where better feature wise when Haswell and DC came out. Gigabyte should over engineer their boards again. 

[Raudi_]

super nice. 

 

I think MSIs OC boards where better feature wise when Haswell and DC came out. Gigabyte should over engineer their boards again. 

I agree when Gigabyte tried to do that for Haswell and DC it lead to alot of BIOS issues with the boards.

[arnavvr]

I agree when Gigabyte tried to do that for Haswell and DC it lead to alot of BIOS issues with the boards.

 

Gigabyte has their SOC Force Boards right?

[Raudi_]

Gigabyte has their SOC Force Boards right?

Yes they do, but they have some BIOS issues that hold them back quite a bit.

[arnavvr]

Yes they do, but they have some BIOS issues that hold them back quite a bit.

 

Oh, how hard are you pushing your 4770K, and on what cooler.

[Raudi_]

Oh, how hard are you pushing your 4770K, and on what cooler.

I only did a quick OC of 4.3 at 1.25v, I still need to spend some time getting a solid OC, I'm on a NH-D14

[arnavvr]

I only did a quick OC of 4.3 at 1.25v, I still need to spend some time getting a solid OC, I'm on a NH-D14

 

Hmm, I was able to get 4.3 on my A88XM-PLUS, but at 1.4 volts on a 212 Evo.

[Raudi_]

Hmm, I was able to get 4.3 on my A88XM-PLUS, but at 1.4 volts on a 212 Evo

Thats alot of voltage for a 212 Evo to handle. 

[arnavvr]

Thats alot of voltage for a 212 Evo to handle. 

 

I know, but that was just for expermental purposes, I am now on Stock Voltages @ 3.7