Thursday, May 15th 2014
MSI Announces Z97 Gaming 9 AC Flagship LGA1150 Motherboard
MSI launched its Intel Z97 chipset-based Gaming series lineup with three ATX motherboards, the Z97 Gaming 3, the Z97 Gaming 5, and the Z97 Gaming 7. The company now made a high-end addition, with the Z97 Gaming 9 AC. Built in the standard ATX form-factor, the board is filled to the brim with features targeted more toward high-end gaming PC builds, than professional CPU/memory overclocking. It still offers a decent overclocking feature-set. To begin with, the board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, 8-pin EPS connectors, and uses a 16-phase VRM to condition power for the CPU, which is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots, and three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (x8/x4/x4 when all three are populated, x8/x8/x0 when two are, and x16/x0/x0 when one is. 3-way SLI and CrossFire are supported.
An EMI shield covers the rear-panel I/O, while another shields the entire onboard audio circuitry, and the NICs. Audio is care of a 100+ dBA SNR DAC, which an external headphone amp circuit, ground-layer isolation, audio-grade capacitors, and EMI shielding. Wired connectivity is handled by Broadcom's newer Killer E2205 gigabit NIC. Wireless connectivity is handled by an Intel-made chipset that offers 802.11 ac WLAN, and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity. Storage connectivity is devoid of SATA-Express, but features eight SATA 6 Gb/s, and an M.2 slot. Overclocking features include voltage measurement points, and POST LED display. Expect this one to go for over US $200.
An EMI shield covers the rear-panel I/O, while another shields the entire onboard audio circuitry, and the NICs. Audio is care of a 100+ dBA SNR DAC, which an external headphone amp circuit, ground-layer isolation, audio-grade capacitors, and EMI shielding. Wired connectivity is handled by Broadcom's newer Killer E2205 gigabit NIC. Wireless connectivity is handled by an Intel-made chipset that offers 802.11 ac WLAN, and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity. Storage connectivity is devoid of SATA-Express, but features eight SATA 6 Gb/s, and an M.2 slot. Overclocking features include voltage measurement points, and POST LED display. Expect this one to go for over US $200.
15 Comments on MSI Announces Z97 Gaming 9 AC Flagship LGA1150 Motherboard
Hope soon mobos to change it's color - entirely white PCB for example will be cool!
If HERO has same VRM as EXTREME...VRM is not that important for overclock like is has been on other platforms. So focusing on that is equally un-important. I dropped covering that in detail on my reviews due to this.
That's all I had to say, really.
On Z87/Z97, even puny 4-phase or 6-phase VRM can OC CPUs to 4.6 GHz+.
btw that msi SFC vrm are like on gpu's and those can sustain some serious stress, dunno why this dissing