The MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC motherboard
Black and Red is easily the most popular colour scheme for gaming boards these days. MSI have gone with a subtle amount of Red and kept the PCIe and Dimm slots all black, which we think looks excellent. The chipset/PCH heatsink includes the MSI Gaming Series Logo/branding.
On the left we have the back IO. This includes 8 x USB 3.0 slots. 2 x USB 2.0 ports with enhanced 5V/audio support. 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse port. 1 x RJ45 Ethernet connection. 1 x Optical S/PDIF audio out with 6 x 3.5mm Audio jacks. Lastly we have the standard Clear CMOS button.
MSI have included 8 x SATA 6GB/s ports, with two of them coming from the included ASMedia ASM1061 chipset. So plenty of storage options available straight off. To the right we can see one of the included USB 3.0 internal headers, which is angled to match the SATA ports as well.
Moving up to the top right of the board we have another USB 3.0 internal header, but this time it’s not angled like before. The standard 24-pin power for the board and to the right of that we have 9 x V-Check connectors for VCCIN, DDR, Core, GFX, RING, C-SA, and 3 x GND. Lastly we have the on-board power/reset buttons and the OC Genie switch.
The bottom right of the boards we have the front IO headers, 2 x USB 2.0 headers with the red colour one supporting enhanced audio. We also have 2 (4pin) sysfan headers, making it a total of 4 available (2 on the top of board). The 2-digit debug code led, which also reports CPU temp when in Windows (very handy)
The board totals 3 PCIe 3.0 x 16 slots and 3 x PCIe 2.0 X1 slots. The boards supports running PCIe 3.0 @ X16, X8/X8, or X8/X4/X4. 3-Way AMD Crossfire support and 2 way Nvidia SLI support. Inbetween the PCIE slots we have an M.2 port which supports 42mm, 60mm, and 80mm lengths with a total of 10Gbps speed under PCIe or 6Gb/s under SATA.
Here we have the included VRM heatsinks, which included MSI’s dragon design logo on the sides. A nice little touch!. Both heatsinks have embedded red LED’s as well.
Accessories
The last thing we have to look at is the included accessories. MSI include a total of 6 SATA 6Gbps cables with 3 x right angled and 3 x straight. We also have the standard SLI bridge cable, and I/O shield/cover. MSI also included a rear panel eSATA connector. Lastly we have the WiFi/Bluetooth module and included aerials.
2. Photos
