MSI Z87 MPower Motherboard Review

A great feature found on the Z87 MPower is the inclusion of some benchtop controls including power, reset, BCLK +/- and OC Genie.  These come in handy when the motherboard is used outside of a chassis or when you are troubleshooting an issue.   Nearby you will find a small toggle switch that will change between the two OC Genie modes and a handy GO 2 BIOS button that will boot into the BIOS at the next reboot.  This is handy when you have fast boot enabled which will disable the keyboard during the boot process.

Internal SATA connections number eight and follow the new SATA6 connection standard.  Six ports come directly from the Z87 chipset while the two additional ports are part of the included ASMedia controller.

For those of you looking to take advantage of SSD caching or simply don't want to use an external HDD you can use the centrally located mSATA port found between the two primary video card slots.  

The Z87 MPower I/O panel is quite full and rather unique for a motherboard like this.  You will find a single combined PS/2 keyboard and mouse plug, six USB 3.0 ports (blue), two USB 2.0 ports (black), a single gigabit Ethernet connection with a special yellow socket, and 8 channel analog audio with digital connections over optical.  Onboard video is handled by 2x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort.

Between the PS/2 and USB 3.0 modules you'll find a CMOS reset button that lights up blue along with space for the removable Wifi/BlueTooth module.

The audio module found on the Z87 MPower is very unique in that it is Sound Blaster design and occupies a section of the motherboard that is electrically separated from the rest of the main PCB.  You can see this separation in the PCB layers where the board is devoid of color.  

To further illustrate that the layers are completely separate on the reverse side of the motherboard you'll find a series of white LEDs that light up and actually shine thru the PCB layers when the system is powered on.

MSI has also included an Audio Boost module that is a built-in headphone amplifier that allows you to get better quality sound from studio grade headgear that is normally reserved for specialized sound cards.