Every brand has a top-of-the-line motherboard and the Z87 MPower MAX is the leader of the pack for team MSI.
The most striking feature of the board is the North Bridge heatsink that covers 3 out of 4 corners of the CPU socket. Note that there are 2 CPU12V connectors at the corner but it’s a tight fit.
Here’s another angle of the heatsink, it’s a single large piece that covers the socket as if it’s a complex of some kind. It might pose installation problems for larger heatsinks, and there much less room for wire management (Eg the wires from fan).
DIMMs at the usual corner, along with MSI’s V-Check Points for multimeter reading connections.
It would be a shame if a board of this grade didn’t come with Debug LED, which it did. 😀 Debug LED is absolutely a welcome, especially for people like me.
Well spaced PCI-E slots, and easy access bottons at the border of the board. They’re next to useless if you decide to use the 3rd PCI-E slot and have the board placed in a casing.
Lastly, the I/O panel. Sorry I forgot to remove the protection for some of the ports. 😛 Clear CMOS button at the back is helpful, just be careful not to touch it.
More details at the official product page.
The Verdict
The MPower series board comes in 3 variety, you may refer to the model comparison table.
The MPower MAX retails at about RM 1000 while the MPower (non MAX) retails at about RM 800 with slightly different features. You could settle for the cost-effective alternative if you don’t need those extra features.
The MPower boards also matches the color theme of MSI’s graphic card range, like say the GTX 780 Lightning and their HAWK series graphic cards.
