Test System

Initial Setup

My testing equipment completely dwarfing the mITX MSI Z97I GAMING, the large VGA and CPU cooler nearly completely hide the board from view. I did manage to get my CoolerMaster TPC812 fitted without any issues, the red and black PCH cooler peeking out through the small area the large CPU heatsink does not cover.


Attaching all the wiring to the MSI Z97I GAMING with my large cooler installed was far easier than I expected because I simply had to attach everything in a straight line. I did mount my cooler sideways to make it fit properly, but doing so also led to better VGA temperatures because Haswell CPUs do not output much thermally even though they run fairly hot.


Easily booting into our freshly installed OS, drivers were effortlessly installed off the provided discs.



Pushing my reference 4.6 GHz OC went equally well as voltages and results all lined up as expected. I provided a few scores of my overclock above for those interested in looking at those.