Test System

Initial Setup

Initial boot-up with the MSI Z87-G45 GAMING was quick and simple, and installing device drivers off the CD was quick and painless. There's not a lot for me to say here because everything worked exactly as expected.

Some boards have custom Turbo profiles that boost performance at "stock" settings, giving the appearance of having more performance than they really should. MSI has a custom turbo profile enabled by default with all of their GAMING-series products as gamers have unanimously told MSI that this is what they want. I personally feel that a coupon for Intel's Performance Tuning Protection Plan should be included in the box to protect against CPU failures if boards do this without giving the end user a way to turn it off, or don't explicitly state doing so. For more information on Intel's Performance Tuning Protection Plan, check their site HERE


Once I had the board fully installed into my test station, I took a moment to swap my MSI GTX670 Power Edition cards out for a set of MSI GAMING GTX650Ti BOOST OC cards. All of MSI's GAMING videocards get performance boosts when installed into MSI GAMING motherboards. MSI conveyed the idea that the GTX650Ti BOOST cards provide the level of performance they expect users to enjoy with the MSI Z87-G45 GAMING, making my pictures here show the complete platform MSI designed.


With the cards and my Coolermaster TPC812 in place, there was just enough room for everything to fit. I really like MSI's dual-GPU-optimized layout that leaves lots of room between the VGA cards and the cooler up top, with plenty of room for the VGAs to draw in fresh, cool air.


The MSI Z87-G45 GAMING offers the same clearance for coolers as its bigger sibling by using the same VRM coolers as its -GD65 brother, leaving plenty of space between the coolers and my CoolerMaster TPC 812's rear-mounted fan. Even the 8-pin is easily accessible while the cooler is installed, which should go a long way towards good cable management inside a full tower case.

Power Consumption

We measure CPU power consumption since one of our first tasks is to truly verify system stability. I isolate the power coming through the 8-pin ATX connector using an in-line meter that provides voltage and current readings, and total wattage passed through. While this may not prove to isolate the CPU power draw in all instances, it does serve as a good indicator of board efficiency and effective VRM design. Total system power consumption is no longer reported as this figure can change depending on what VGA is installed. The sole board-only power measurements possible without physically modifying a motherboard are those taken via the 8-pin CPU connector, making it the only figure of value worth reporting. I use wPrime with eight threads selected in the options, since it provides a consistently high workload throughout the full length of the test and runs long enough for the VRM and CPU to produce a fair bit of heat. Most average workloads will draw far less than this, although distributed computing applications are quite similar. This is not supposed to test stability since I use several of other applications to do so, but merely to provide repeatable power draw numbers that anyone can replicate. The meter used is an off-the-shelf Zalman unit that has been on the market for some time. It provides quite similar results in my test environment when compared with a FLUKE 337 clamp meter.


Power consumption with the MSI Z87-G45 GAMING was a bit higher than we've seen on previously tested products, which is in large due to the VRM design employed on the MSI Z87-G45. The design appears to be a hybridized digital one that offers the same level of adjustability as a fully digital VRM without the same efficiency, as evidenced by the results here. In the end, the difference is less than 10W, which is minor, but that difference might also influence the “cost of ownership” over the long term.