MSI Z97I GAMING ACK

Phuncz

Phuncz

2[H]4U
Joined
Apr 12, 2009
Messages
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New version of the Z97I GAMING AC (link to H-forum topic)

Specifications

Link to MSI site

  • Supports 4th and 5th Gen Intel® Core™ / Pentium® / Celeron® processors for LGA 1150 socket
  • Supports DDR3-3300(OC) Memory
  • Relocated chipset to allow better CPU socket placement
  • M.2 Type 2242/2260 supported, SATA-600 or 10 Gbps PCIe
  • Audio Boost 2: Realtek ALC1150 Audio Solution
  • USB Audio Power: Serve Stable 5V Power & Better Signal Transmission over USB
  • Headphone Amplifier up to 600Ω (rear port in RED)
  • Nichicon Japanese capacitors for audio
  • Military Class 4 components (The Hi-c CAP, Super Ferrite Choke and Dark CAP)
  • 2x HDMI v1.4, 1x DP 1.2, 4x SATA-600, 6x USB 3.0, 6x USB 2.0, 2x 4-pin Fan
  • ACK: Use Killer DoubleShot Pro to combine Killer WIFI with Killer LAN for the best online gaming experience (WiFi is on 2nd M.2 slot above PCIe x16 slot)
  • Killer E2205 Gigabit LAN controller
  • Killer Wireless-AC 1525 module (2x2 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth v4.1)
  • Gaming Device Port: Optimized with Triple Gold-plating for High Polling Rate Gaming Devices


Pictures

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Drivers and Firmware

Links: Drivers


Reviews
xx/xx/xxxx: None yet
 
Interesting new version of the MSI Z97I Gaming board ! Better socket placement, M.2 and even LAN + WLAN teaming !

But it also lost the two eSATA connectors, the Intel 7260-AC WiFi card and the 42/60mm cards are really not what you want with M.2.
 
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About time they moved the CPU socket to the middle instead of keeping it right next to the PCI-E slot on their ITX boards.
 
In an thread of the Notebookreview-forum a user test the i ntel 7260 and the new Killer 1525 (the msi board use) and the killer card is much more faster in the ac 5,2 ghz band.
 
Looks like they switched to the more common layout for mITX. Wise move, I'd say.
 
dondan said:
In an thread of the Notebookreview-forum a user test the i ntel 7260 and the new Killer 1525 (the msi board use) and the killer card is much more faster in the ac 5,2 ghz band.
Click to expand...

My 7260 AC card has gotten better since the last driver release, but still flakes out on a regular basis. Don't think I'd ever buy another one, and would rather try anything else instead.

Very nice looking board!
 
Since the M.2 is under the board. Do you have to remove the board to change it out? Or does the newer cases actually have a slot to remove it while left in the case? I don't run a ITX, so I wanted to ask about the slot and cases being made to adjust to this feature. It seems everyone has went to the Killer Nic/wireless stuff now also.

M.2 Type 2242/2260 supported, SATA-600 or 10 Gbps PCIe
Click to expand...
 
KILLER_K said:
Since the M.2 is under the board. Do you have to remove the board to change it out? Or does the newer cases actually have a slot to remove it while left in the case? I don't run a ITX, so I wanted to ask about the slot and cases being made to adjust to this feature. It seems everyone has went to the Killer Nic/wireless stuff now also.
Click to expand...
Man, I wished I waited for this... I am hating my ASUS m7i...
 
Mackan said:
Too many boards with red theme...
Click to expand...

Yeah GB, Asus, and MSI all have boards with a red color theme. :(

At least we have black boards from GB and MSI, gold boards from Asus and blue boards from Asrock :)
 
KILLER_K said:
Since the M.2 is under the board. Do you have to remove the board to change it out?
Click to expand...
If you look at the last picture in the start post, you can see it's well below the CPU socket. Depending on the case, you may or not may not be able to reach it. But I would reckon most won't, considering it's about 20-30mm from the board's edge.

KILLER_K said:
It seems everyone has went to the Killer Nic/wireless stuff now also.
Click to expand...
Asus, ASRock and EVGA haven't, most of them have Intel which I personally prefer.
I do like the combo they did on this board with the prioritizing on different connections, although it is mainly marketing BS. It's your router that has to prioritize applications over your internet connection, not your PC that has to seperate them over LAN or WLAN. There is no game that can clog your Gbit connection to your router, unless you have a >1Gbps internet connection. But the teaming function seems nice to have for file management purposes if it works transparently.
 
rawrr said:
Yeah GB, Asus, and MSI all have boards with a red color theme. :(

At least we have black boards from GB and MSI, gold boards from Asus and blue boards from Asrock :)
Click to expand...

Yeah, but most give their "flagship" boards the red theme. Sucks for me, since I never buy red. I think there should be a better selection of colours and heatsink shapes/themes, etc. Just like they do with memory. There was a cool bluish Asus board with the Z77 platform some years, ago. Would have been perfect for me today.
 
Mackan said:
There was a cool bluish Asus board with the Z77 platform some years, ago. Would have been perfect for me today.
Click to expand...

Yeah, still love the look of it. I did plastidip mine in white to bring out the blue better.

 
WiSK said:
Yeah, still love the look of it. I did plastidip mine in white to bring out the blue better.

Click to expand...

I had your image in mind when I wrote it. :) Really gorgeous board. But I guess it makes the board warmer (the plastidip), which feels risky.
 
Huge step forward. The positioning of the RAM-slots and SATA-connectors is a plus over the ASUS Impact (if you don't need the special OC features and tools of the ASUS Impact). Unfortunately it comes with the MSI Dragon-theme for gamer kiddies. If MSI would do something totally crazy like giving their high-end hardware a simple full black finish for purists, they would probably sell much more hardware.

Does that M.2-socket steel 8 PCIe-lanes from the graphics card like the M.2 support on the ASUS Impact does? That would make the board even more interesting - if you can get past the childish color theme.
 
What I want is a nice black and white mITXboard, like MSI's Krait board and one of Asus' X99 boards.
 
Sverebom said:
Unfortunately it comes with the MSI Dragon-theme for gamer kiddies. If MSI would do something totally crazy like giving their high-end hardware a simple full black finish for purists, they would probably sell much more hardware.
Click to expand...

Think I actually mentioned a similar idea to Eugene. It would really serve them well to have a narrow "elite" high-end product line that forgoes the usual ugly gamer styling with bright red accents and stupid dragons for a design that's more understated and classy. Just something simple, like all black, or black with silver metal accents.

Heck, they even could've named this board the BL.ACK, instead of ACK..

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:p
 
Sverebom said:
Does that M.2-socket steel 8 PCIe-lanes from the graphics card like the M.2 support on the ASUS Impact does?
Click to expand...
It would seem to be PCIe 2.0 x2, considering it's 10Gbps like the Asus Z97I-PLUS.
 
AFD said:
Think I actually mentioned a similar idea to Eugene. It would really serve them well to have a narrow "elite" high-end product line that forgoes the usual ugly gamer styling with bright red accents and stupid dragons for a design that's more understated and classy. Just something simple, like all black, or black with silver metal accents
Click to expand...

They could even take it a step further and let the buyer chose the colour accents like for example Corsair does with their fans. And that dragon thing needs to go. I thought that dragons were gone long ago, hoping that the entire gamer segment would finally grow up (at least as far as the major manufacturers are concerned) and then MSI comes around with another dragon.

@Phunc
Sorry, I don't understand. Does that mean that the M.2 socket doesn't limit the bandwidth of the PCIe socket?
 
no m.2 2280 support? wow, why even put it on the board if your not going to do it right?

standard size m.2 SSD's won't fit on this board as most are 80mm long. so any questions about bandwidth aren't going to matter because you aren't going to be able to put anything in that socket that needs that sort of bandwidth.
 
Sverebom said:
Sorry, I don't understand. Does that mean that the M.2 socket doesn't limit the bandwidth of the PCIe socket?
Click to expand...
The Z97-chipset and 4th generation Core Desktop processors allow 8 usable PCIe 2.0 lanes for peripherals (think network, soundcard, M.2, ...) at 500MB/s each. This means that 10Gbit M.2 is about 2 PCIe 2.0 lanes, like the Asus Z97I-PLUS. Link (page 11)
But it doesn't seem like it's limiting the x16 slot for the graphics card, but that wouldn't matter anyway since a single GPU isn't bandwidth-limited with PCIe 3.0 x8 anyway.

To quote Anandtech:
On single GPU gaming, at our 1080p Maximum settings presets, gave almost zero difference with the bandwidth difference. The biggest drop was 1.4% for Company of Heroes 2. If this is the worst effect of dropping down from PCIe 3.0 x16 to x8, then I am encouraging all manufacturers, especially those making mini-ITX motherboards, to seriously consider ways to implement a M.2 x4 slot on their products.
Click to expand...
The other games differed less than 1% and one even improved framerate slightly, but I guess this would all be within the tolerances. But consider that PCIe 3.0 x4 is about 3.5 to 4 times faster than PCIe 2.0 x2, I'd happily trade in 1-2 fps for insane storage speeds.

Screes said:
no m.2 2280 support? wow, why even put it on the board if your not going to do it right?
Click to expand...
I agree, ASRock did the same thing with their M.2 implementation but they don't even allow 60mm long cards, just up to 42mm. The result is that you will have a very hard time finding one that fits, the ones I found are the SanDisk A110 (PCIe) and Micron M600 (SATA), both OEM though. The 60mm variant does seem to get some decent support as it allows ample space for controller and two flash chips.
 
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What would be even better if we could decide what where we want the PCIe lanes to be distributed. Just a simple setting where you can choose between x16 + x2 and x8 + x4. I am pretty certain that there were boards in the past that did this automatically for the GPU slots, so single slot configurations would run in x16, dual in x16 + x16 and triple in x16 + x8 + x8. But those were ATX boards, I'm not sure if the required circuitry would fit on a mITX one.
 
I don't know if it is possible like that, since on Z97 you're splitting between PCIe 3.0 lanes supplied by the CPU and PCIe 2.0 lanes supplied by the chipset. It's not just "we enabled only 2 lanes because we are donkeys", but because of limitations. That's why I went with the only board in town that has PCIe 3.0 x4 lanes for M.2 and supports NVMe, the Asus VII Impact.
 
If you're in the US, it has been on amazon since the 5th. Currently "available" from third party sellers, though I don't know how much I would trust them. When I placed an order with Amazon directly they said the expected delivery date was early to mid February. Not sure where that date comes from, however.
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
When you add it to cart it says the vendor has 10 in stock and there's optional 2-day shipping (Jan 15 delivery) for $45. I suppose if they don't ship within the next day you may have a case for cancellation/refund? Not familiar with 3rd-party sellers.
 
Thanks, I couldn't find it on Amazon when I searched before. I'm still waiting on my M1 and haven't ordered any other components yet, so I'll place the pre-order direct from Amazon, it's 25$ cheaper there with free shipping as well.
 
Just got my expected delivery date on Amazon updated to January 28th. Sounds like it should be shipping soon.
 
Looking forward to some reviews :) I have more respect for MSI after I got my mom a GS60 for work(I spoiled her years ago by giving her my old gaming laptop as a desktop replacement). I am leaning towards this Motherboard for my build later this year paired with my M1 v3, the only possible downside is the smaller Sized and Overall Max Speed for the M.2. I would rather it be 2280 max & Gen3 x4 for future higher speeds, but considering M.2 drives are going to be released in the coming months I'm quite sure there will be a 2260 10Gpbs PCIe ssd of decent size & Speed.
 
I am now finished with my built and did not have big issues.

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The layout is fine. You can reach all 4 SATA ports and most ports are on the right side. Only the 8 PIN port is on the top left corner.

The BIOS is clear but has a lot of RAM tweaking settings if you need them.

In the NCase I had no issues to use the Noctua C14 cooler with TridentX RAM and SATA cables over the RAM.


The only issue I had was with USB devices. After installing the USB 3.0 driver on logon no USB device was identified. Even in the "fail safe" win mode I could not use my keyboard or mouse.

After disabling the several USB modes in BIOS I could use the USB devices again. Then I enables all USB modes again and the USB devices still work. Even after installing the same USB 3.0 driver all devices are working. I dont now what it was but I can not reproduce the issue.

I did not make a fresh Win 7 install because I had a i5 and a Z77 mainboard before. Maybe this is the reason?


Overall I can recommend this mainboard.
 
You should always reformat and do a fresh windows install if you swap motherboards.
 
I install new only if I change the chipset. Intel Z77 to Intel Z97 and i5 to new i5 is a not so big change so I do not make a fresh install.
 
An other issue but this is common on other mainboards too.

DONT USE the Killer LAN Application! I had a lot of failed connections after installing it. My RX100 could not connect to the PC, my Canon printer could not be reached from my PC and I couldnt even logon on my fritzbox router.

After testing a connect to the router via WLAN all worked fine. A last test over the Killer ethernet card showed the same bad behavior. So I deinstalled the killer app, installed the ethernet drivers only and now all works fine over ethernet.
 
Anyone receive theirs from Amazon yet? Mine still has an estimated arrival date of Feb 10 - Thu, Feb 19, but it hasn't shipped yet.

Edit: Just updated on Amazon this morning, now arriving Friday, Feb 27
 
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Anyone have any boot issues with this board the first time they set it up? All my parts came in today for an M1 build. Everything is hooked up, but no luck booting. The only thing that powers on is the CPU fan.No lights on usb devices and nothing on the monitor.

It's been a long time since I've built a computer, but I don't think I've forgotten that much. I swapped memory around to different slots, replaced with known working sticks from my main computer. I'm evening using the power supply out of the main computer right now. I've also reseated the CPU. So that seems to narrow things down to the CPU or the motherboard.

Found the pc speaker header, plugged that in, but no beeps indicating a problem.

Any tips? Bad motherboard?

MSI Z97I ACK
i7-4790k
Crucial Ballistix Tactical, 2x8gb
Silverstone SX-500-LG
Samsung 850 Evo
 
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Make sure the the power connections are in correctly? If the power is plugged correctly, the board would turn on and indicate that something was not right with a beep or lights.
 
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