MSI goes for the Dragon theme on the box in a splendid black and red theme, similar to the gaming series graphics cards. The black and yellow is for the extreme overclocking motherboards and graphics card series.

 

 

 

 

The Z87-G45 Gaming board is a full blown ATX form factor with a dark brown 6 layer PCB. In my book, by utilizing black plastic for the DIMM and PCI-e slots in combination with the special dragon shaped heatsinks, MSI managed to offer a stunning looking motherboard, all at a very fair price level. However looks are subjective, so I let the readers decide whether this is hot or not.

 

 

 

Not surprisingly we spot the usage of military class 4 components. The PWM area has got 8 phases, dark caps and super ferrite chokes resulting in lower operating temperatures, delivering good power efficiency and stability during long gaming sessions. An 8 pin CPU power plug  can be found in between the two dragon shaped heatsinks.

 

 

 

 

 

Good spacing is provided between the top two PCIe x16 slots. A total of 3 PCIe x16 slots are foreseen. The operating mode will be x16/ x0/ x0, x8/ x8/ x0, or x8/ x4/ x4. Thus allowing for a 3-way AMD Crossfire or 2-way SLI multi GPU. Nice to see MSI also including SLI support in this budget friendly motherboard.

The Super RAID option is something we have seen being introduced by Gigabyte in their Z77 lineup. While back then it was still linked with a SATA 3GB/s port and the mSATA SSDs were quite expensive and slow, making this feature hardly useful to even integrate it on the PCB. Things have changed for the better, as the speeds, especially the write performance of these SSDs has improved, yet performance and cost price wise it still remains more worthwhile to invest in a real SSD than these mSATA versions.

 

Is it worthwhile to have voltage measuring points on a gaming motherboard ? Nice to add it to the feature list, yet I still have to see the first gamer at a LAN party opening his case and hooking up a Digital Multi Meter for voltage verifications.

 

 

 

The sound is provided by an isolated ALC1150 chip, hidden underneath a red LED illuminated cover plate. The chip is providing 7.1 channel high definition audio support. The Audio Boost technology provides you with crisp and clear amplified audio.

 

 

 

Also onboard is the Killer E2205 ethernet NIC, that should allow for lower ping and less latency gaming experience. How to properly test its function is pretty hard to achieve as the internet connection to and from the server can vary from minute to minute. On paper this Killer NIC is superior to the fast Intel NIC and should warrant a more enjoyable online game experience.

 

  

 

With this Z87-G45 Gaming board the number of features is kept to a bare minimum, hence why we only spot a total of six angled SATA 6GB/s ports, however more then plenty to satisfy most end-users. The angled USB3.0 connector also adds a nice pro touch to the PCB. 

On the backside we spot a PS2 connector and two USB2.0 ports with extra gold plating and enhanced polling for smoother gameplay. Four USB3.0 ports via the Z87 chipset, Clear CMOS button, 1 x Coaxial S/PDIF connector, 1 x Optical S/PDIF OUT connector,  1 x VGA, 1 x HDMI , 1 x DVI-D port and six gold plated audio jacks.

Even the Click 4 Gaming bios gets the personalised Gaming Dragon theme. Liking or disliking a Bios layout is something personal, The G45's Bios is easy to navigate through, yet having a personal preference for more tab like versions. It's all a matter of adjusting, the G45 Gaming BIOS has more then abundant settings to control voltages, timings, etc...

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since the release of Sandy Bridge, Intel's first Socket 1155, most hardware vendors are no longer respecting the Intel specifications regarding the Turbo policy. Most were imposing the same Turbo ratio to all the cores instead. This makes the lives of us the reviewers even harder as we needed to adapt our reviewing method. With Haswell nothing has really changed, however finding it very weird that some other hardware websites list they are using out of the box boards with no Bios alterations whatsoever besides loading the usual XMP profile.

For our stock tests we go out of the box and just go into the Bios and load the XMP profile for our 16GB Dual channel CORSAIR Vengeance Pro kit. Audio and LAN ports are disabled too.

 

Starting off with some 2D action, were the CPU/Mainboard combo is tested in single and multi thread performance, Also were the RAM bandwidth gets analysed and we can draw conclusions how good or bad the bios engineers did their job.

The SuperPi 32M runs are directly amongst the fastest scores out of the box. The RAM timings are pretty set tight, which is a good thing, as long as the RAM compatibility doesn't suffer. The multi-threaded Wprime1024 score is again among the big boys, aka the double and triple priced motherboards. Not surprisingly and alike the XPOWER board, the MSI G45 Gaming utilises a more agressive turbo approach then the Intel and ASRock boards. Truly a great start by this humble priced MSI Gaming board.

 

 

 

And the story continues as the G45 Gaming board keeps on contending with the other boards for the top spot. The agressive Turbo policy and tight secondary and tertiary RAM timings really makes this board one of the faster out of the box boards tested. Heck it's even besting or even beating MSI's own Z87 XPOWER without breaking a sweat.

 

 

 

No matter the test we ran, the little Z87 G45 was there to prove us wrong that a far from expensive board is automatically linked to low performance. Just in the X264HD encoding test it has to give way to it's bigger brother the XPOWER. This is board is growing on me, test after test.

 

 

 

 

Starting off the 3DMark benchsuite with Futuremark's 3DMark11. No matter the benchmark we throw at the Z87-G45 Gaming, it stays right in front,  messing with the other far higher priced Z87 sibblings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The above 3D benchmarks clearly show the MSI Z87-G45 is no slouch at all. Whoever claimed that budget boards are slow is so wrong. In fact for a budget minded gamer, this board is a perfect fit !

We quickly tested the MSI OC Genie 4 Overclocking function and were a bit dissapointed as it has only one speed on the G45 Gaming board. Unlike the two speed selectable switch on the the Z87-XPOWER board. You can find the OC Genie button on the top left hand part of the Click Bios 4 start page.

 

 

After a few restarts we got this result, completely stable with our Madshrimps Test Suite at 4000MHz and 2400MHz on the RAMs set. Not bad but this CPU frequency is just 100MHz over the out of the box configuration. Other brands include profiles up to 4500-4600MHz, which might be too much for some i7-4770K models. However 4200-4400MHz could be perfectly warranted at the press of a button :p

 

 

The RAM compatibility test is not alike with the Overclocking boards. No PSC, nor BBSE legacy DIMM test here. We just test the high speed kits we have at our disposal at the Madshrimps lab.  The PC has to complete a SuperPi 32M and a X64HD encoding run. The MSI Z87-G45 Gaming board ran almost 99% flawless with the XMP profiles loaded.

• CORSAIR 4 x 4GB 2666C10: PASS
• CORSAIR 4 x 4GB 2800C11: is set at 2666MHz C11-13-13-31 2T
• CORSAIR 2 x 8GB 2400C10 Vengeance Pro: PASS
• GeIL Evo Veloce 2 x 8GB 2133C10: PASS
• G.SKILL TridentX 2 x 4GB 2400C9: PASS
• Kingston Predator 2 x 4GB 2400C11: PASS
• Kingston BEAST 2 x 4GB 2400C10: PASS
• Kingston BEAST 2 x 8GB 2400C11: PASS
• ...

 

 

 

time to wrap it up...

 

MSI is trying to regain some market share versus the immaculate ROG series from ASUS or the G1 series from Gigabyte. However MSI is targeting the gamer and only the gamer with it's Gaming branded lineup. Not the enthusiast, nor the extreme overclocker needs to take a look at the MSI Gaming series.

These boards are designed to please the gaming community with great hardware compatibility versus multi GPU setups. Also supporting Crossfire as well as SLI is great at this price level. Utilization of high quality military grade components warrant hassle free operation. Improved audio quality versus more mainstream audio solutions enhances your game experience. The highly acclaimed Killer E2205 NIC is ready to assure low latency gaming pings during your gaming encounters. And the best of these gaming series is that even the GD65 Gaming board is far cheaper than most competitor's mATX offering.

The Z87-G45 is a low budget Gaming board par excellence, performing great in our entire benchmark suite, besting or even outperforming other high end labeled motherboards. The G45 Gaming Click 4 Bios is well dialed in, really surprising as most of the XMP shortcomings we experienced with the XPOWER board, were not present while testing this Z87-G45 Gaming board.

 

The OC Genie 4 function is a tad on the slow side and requires an update. Out of the box, with a i7-4770K speeds of 3900MHz are warranted. After activating the OC Genie button in the Bios you get a mere 100MHz more. Okay the RAM speed is bumped up, but 4200MHz or higher speed could easily be warranted for 24/7 usage.

 

Retailing at 135 euros, about 30 Euros lower then the GD65 Gaming version, makes this G45 ideal as an entry gaming platform, this with extra added gaming beneficial features to differentiate it from other manufacturer mainstream offerings. One of the major difference between the G45 and GD65 is the improved PWM (more phases and Hi-C caps), which means the GD65 might be worthwile that little extra higher price if the end user is intending to really push their Haswell CPU. The onboard buttons of the GD65 are useless inside a case. A Dual bios solution on the GD65 versus a single Bios chip for the G45 version. The extra SATA ports could mean the difference between opting for the higher specced GD65 version or when less storage is required to choose for this more affordable G45 Gaming board.

 

This humble MSI Z87-G45 Gaming board has been a pleasure to work with from day one, providing most Gamers with the most vital onboard features that they really need. By leaving out most of the bling bling and maintaining the box accessories sparse, the price tag of this board is really awesome versus the performance/features it delivers. Besides some minor bundled software glitches, we really enjoyed the stability of the G45 Gaming board. Therefore we award the MSI Z87-G45 Gaming motherboard the Value award. The MSI Z87 G45 Gaming board comes close to the ultimate balance between price, features and out of the box performance.

 

 

PROS:

• Excellent value for money
  
• Out of the box performance
• Audio Boost & gold plated audio connectors
• Killer E2205 NIC
  
• PCIe X16 slot spacing, supporting Crossfire & SLI
  

 

CONS:

• Minor Windows software glitches
• Super RAID & Vpoints really needed ?
• OC Genie 4 needs an overhaul
  

 

 

I wish to thank Koen from MSI for the Z87 G45 Gaming motherboard

 

 

Harry from Corsair for the Vengeance Pro 2400C10 memory

 

 

Tones for the years of support