Sadly, the clear CMOS button is the only on-board button that the G45 Gaming boasts. Regardless, it’s a neat extra that would further negate cabling should you chose to use it, as the power and data connections are integrated right into the board. Sadly, mSATA drives are yet to see industry-wide SSD adoption, with the likes of Samsung’s SSD 840 and OCZ’s Vector yet to make the jump to the smaller form factor, so its inclusion wouldn’t be top of our list when picking motherboard features. This slot takes SATA 6gbps bandwidth from the SATA6 port, so connecting an mSATA drive will disable this port. The SATA situation is further improved with the addition of an mSATA slot right in the middle of the board. This is complemented by a 90° right-angle USB 3.0 header - a nice touch for what is fast becoming the most awkward motherboard connector behind the 24-pin and 8-pin power connectors.
#MSI SOFTWARE AND APPLICATION GUIDE FOR A MSI Z87 GD65 FULL#
Fitting a pair of dual-slot GPUs will obscure a pair of these, but that still leaves a couple for expansion cards.Įlsewhere the G45 Gaming offers the standard Z87 chipset’s six SATA 6gbps ports, but compliments them with a full set of 90° right-angled connectors to help keep cabling tidy. Alongside are no less than four PCI-E 1x slots. As they’re all PCI-E 3.0 though, this still means double the bandwidth of like-for-like PCI-E 2.0 slots. The slots share x16 lanes of bandwidth between them, so a single slot gets x16 lanes, a pair of slots both run with x8 lanes and three cards run at x8, x4, x4. It supports up to three-card CrossFire and two-card SLI thanks to a trio of PCI-E 3.0 16x slots. The G45 Gaming’s feature set also belies its low price. Despite the cut-price though, the G45-Gaming more than looks the part, with a black PCB, VRM heatsinks and Southbridge cooler, trimmed in an anodised red, dragon-styled trim. The Z87-G45-Gaming sits at that mid-range point and at less than £115 is substantially cheaper than many of the other enthusiast-targeted boards on the market. Further up are the super-high end MPower overclocking boards, but for most of us MSI is offering a fairly straightforward choice between its entry, mid-level and high-end Z87 boards. Below £100 there’s the G41 and G43, before bumping up to the £120 G45-Gaming and £170 GD65-gaming. Unlike many of its competitors, who seem to operate with the objective of drowning the market in overlapping SKUs, MSI’s Z87 product stack is refreshingly simple to follow.
MSI Z87-G45 Gaming Review Manufacturer: MSI
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