MSI Z97S SLI Plus Review

Performance Analysis

We usually tweak any stock speed options you might tinker with if you weren't overclocking the CPU to get the most out of the board at stock speed. In this case, we enabled a setting called Enhanced Turbo, which helps to keep the Turbo Boost frequency fixed under load to improve results. This didn't seem to do a huge amount in most tests, but the Z97S SLI Plus posted a resonable video encoding score. That said, it was some way down the table overall in the media benchmarks, albeit still only just over 70 points from the top.

It was a little more competitive in the game tests with mid-table results, but its SATA 6Gbps and M.2 performance were bang on the money, and it was actually 8MB/sec faster on the read speed than the Asus Maximus VII Gene, although admittedly this barely equates to 1 percent. Power consumption was low at stock speed but given the additional vcore required to hit 4.8GHz, it wasn't surprising to see some of the highest results on test once overclocked.

With little fanfare about the Z97S SLI Plus's audio credentials, we weren't surprised to see fairly typical results for the on-board sound. The standard Realtek ALC898 baseline results using an Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe were slightly ahead in some tests but for the most part were very similar. However, the SupremeFX Impact II daughter card of the Maximus VII Gene was noticeably better across the board.

Conclusion

It's a solid effort from MSI with the Z97S SLI Plus. It does lack the pizazz of some of the £130+ motherboards we've been looking at recently, but as a motherboard that you'd just want to plant in a case, overclock, and get on with some gaming, there's little to dislike. It also offers SATA Express and M.2, has a good layout and great EFI.

The only flies in the ointment were mediocre audio and overclocking performance, although the latter was only due to more voltage than usual being needed to hit our CPU's maximum 4.8GHz, which it eventually did. It otherwise ticks all the boxes, although ASRock's Fatal1ty Z97 is also worthy of consideration while Asus' Maximus VII Ranger costs just £20 more but has a range of extra useful features.