MSI Z87-G45 Gaming Motherboard

MSI may not have released the Z87-G45 gaming motherboard yet, but it somehow reached the hands of someone who snapped photos of it and posted them on CoolEnjoy website.

The platform is everything one might expect of a high-end desktop PC platform, and perhaps more since some features are rare even among those. For example, the mainboard has a multi-BIOS switch near the DIMM slots, which suggests that the Z87-G45 could have more than two BIOSes (dual BIOS is normal on top-tier motherboards like this one). OC Genie 4, Power On/Off, Reset, Debug LED also stand out, as do the military class IV components, though not as much (solid-state capacitors, 12 Phase VRM with super ferrite chokes). All in all, there is definitely enough room and potential for setting up a strong system, with a Haswell CPU at the heart. Speaking of hardware, storage units can be hooked up via SATA 3 (six SATA 6 Gbps inputs) or externally via USB 3.0 (again, six ports), while add-in cards go in one of the three PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, or of the trio of PCI Express 3.0 x1 slots.

Obviously, one of the first things that comes to mind is a multi-GPU setup involving AMD (CrossFireX) or NVIDIA graphics cards (SLI). An M-PCI-e combo slot is available too, near the top PCI Express 3.0 x16 interface. Furthermore, MSI tossed in Gigabit LAN powered by a Killer Ethernet chip (Killer E2200) and, of course, the full range of video outputs: VGA, DVI, HDMI and even a Gaming device port (reduces peripheral lag). As the photos show, the MSI Z87-G45 gaming motherboard is colored in a mixture of red and black with a dragon theme. It certainly gives off that competitive vibe, if nothing else. Pricing and availability have yet to be disclosed, though the latter is easy enough to pin on next month (June 2013).

MSI Z87-G45
Images credits to CoolEnjoy

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