<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; line-height: 21px; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);">I am always excited when a mini-ITX motherboard bound for the mainstream market crosses my desk.&nbsp; In a small PCB, compared to full sized ATX, it can be difficult to have a feature filled product that stands up to scrutiny.&nbsp; Today we have the Z87I under the hammer, MSI&rsquo;s small solution to Z87 Haswell.</span></span></span></p> <div> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">After recently reviewing MSI&rsquo;s Z87 heavyweight, the&nbsp;MSI Z87 XPower, moving to something smaller means I want to see how much of that big product can be retained down the stack.&nbsp; The MSI Z87I comes in at $140, and there are some noticeable differences (apart from the size) compared to the bigger brothers.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">Nonetheless, the MSI Z87 is geared up for Ethernet network connectivity, with two Realtek NICs.&nbsp; We do have WiFi onboard, although this is the 802.11n 2.4 GHz Centrino N-2230 solution we saw on the XPower &ndash; not the 5 GHz dual band option I would prefer in all WiFi enabled motherboards.&nbsp; This amount of extra network controllers is due to the&nbsp;Flex IO allocation&nbsp;&ndash; as the board only has four SATA 6 Gbps and six USB 3.0 from the chipset, this gives the other 8 Flex IO lanes all the PCIe 2.0 for these controllers.&nbsp; Video outputs come via a HDMI, DisplayPort and combination DVI-I, and the board also sports the Realtek ALC892 audio codec.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">Being a mini-ITX motherboard, our auto overclock options are limited.&nbsp; On almost all mainstream MSI Z87 motherboards we get an OC Genie button giving a one press overclock &ndash; this functionality is relegated to BIOS and software with the Z87I, giving only one option to 4.0 GHz.&nbsp; The BIOS is better than the Z77 brethren, offering a better visual representation of fan speeds (which still need a better upgrade, but is a step in the right direction) and a hardware monitor to detect when hardware is not recognized in the motherboard.&nbsp; There is still room to improve the BIOS, especially in how the overclocking options are organized, although word from MSI is that this will be changed in due course.&nbsp; With the motherboard I reached a 4.6 GHz overclock manually, although the BIOS limited the CPU voltage to 1.3 volts.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">Software is a little different, with Command Center offering voltages up to 2.1 volts (not a good idea) but features like the RAMDisk are a bonus.&nbsp; Live Update 5 works well at updating the system software and drivers, although in our testing it had trouble updating itself, causing me to recommend users get the latest version from the website.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">In terms of results, the Z87I performance is a little strange - despite having MultiCore Turbo enabled by default it does perform worse than expected on a number of computational benchmarks.&nbsp; The one flaw that stood out of the testing was my 2D explicit grid solver test, where the MSI strangely scores 15% less than the rest of our Z87 testing.&nbsp; Discrete GPU and USB testing are on par with other Z87 motherboards without boosting features, and POST times under Windows 7 with a discrete GPU were great, scoring under 9.2 seconds.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">The MSI Z87I offers a nice motherboard for users needing multi-LAN functionality, and Live Update 5 will keep it up to date.&nbsp; The decision to go with the N-2230 is one that baffles me to no end, and I hope that MSI offer a dual band SKU by default, or even an 802.11ac SKU.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/7244/msi-z87i-review-miniitx-haswell-for-140" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></p> </div>