MSI Z87I Gaming AC Review

Performance

After a stonking result in our image editing test, topping our graph, the video encoding and multi-tasking tests slipped a bit at stock speed and the overall score here was mid-table at best. That all changed once we'd overclocked it though. It again put in a fantastic result in the image editing test, the second fastest video encoding score and added a good chunk of points to its multi-tasking score although it was still mediocre here. Overall, its score of 2,904 was the second fastest on test - a brilliant result.


Gaming performance was as you'd expect it to be for an enthusiast board and was never more than a frame or two off the top scorer with only the EVGA Z87 Stinger and Asus Maximus VI Impact managing slightly faster results. You won't be losing any sleep over the SATA speeds either - 543MB/sec read and 519MB/sec write are right up there with the best of them. Perhaps the only poor result was with power consumption although here it was only when the board was overclocked, with our test system peaking at 194W under load in Prime95 - the highest of any mini-ITX board. It can overclock with the best of them but clearly its power circuity isn't quite as efficient as some of the other boards that hit 4.7GHz.


Conclusion

There are a couple of niggles here, mainly with the layout but a lot will depend on the case you're using. With mini-ITX cases varying wildly in layout, we feel we can let MSI off here as it will be fine in some and a bit awkward in others. So where has the MSI Z87I Gaming AC ended up in the overall scheme of things? After all, the enthusiast mini-ITX motherboard market is getting more crowded by the minute. However, despite this, it's actually carved out a nice little niche for itself.

At £120 or thereabouts at time of writing, it costs the same as Asus' Z87i-Pro but that's about it for competitors. It's substantially cheaper than the Maximus VI Impact and Z87 Stinger but equally a fair bit more than the MSI Z87i and Gigabyte GA-Z87N-WiFi. However, the latter two boards have fewer features and lower overclocking potential. Coupled with a good set of features, excellent EFI and better overclocking, the Z87I Gaming AC is arguably a better buy than the Z87i-Pro.

In short, the Maximus VI Impact still reigns supreme as the ultimate mini-ITX motherboard and certainly has a better layout, although this will largely depend on the case you're using. If you can live with its quirky layout though then you can save yourself £50 by opting for the MSI Z87I Gaming AC.