MSI Z97M Gaming Motherboard Review

MSI has been using a similar UEFI on all their motherboards for a little while now. The colors may change but overall it is pretty much the same layout between them.

Upon entering the UEFI, this is the screen that users will be presented with. Each of MSI’s series of motherboard’s UEFI are customized for that series. For example, the Gaming series will have the dragon where as the OC series will have the OC displayed in the center of the screen. Changing boot order can be done from this screen and it is simply dragging and dropping the icons.

System Status	Advanced settings menu	PCI Subsystem Settings	Integrated Peripherals	Windows 8 Configuration/Fast Boot
Wake up Event	USB Configuration	Boot Configuration	Security	Save and Exit

Most of the motherboard settings are in the settings menu; items such as power management, peripherals, booting and security are all configured under this menu.

A built-in BIOS flashing utility is also available in the UEFI allowing users to not only update their BIOS from a USB drive, but save the current BIOS to disk as well. The update file must be placed on the root of the USB drive or else M-Flash will not be able to read it.

On the other side of the screen is the 1st of three options; The overclocking profile. This menu item allows the user to save six profiles to the motherboard as well as save and load profiles from a USB drive.

The next menu item on the right side of the screen is the hardware monitor. The hardware monitor menu allows the user to set fan speeds either by MSIs smart fan mode or by manually setting them using a temperature/RPM slope.  Below the fan configuration are the voltages read by the motherboard. System and CPU temperatures are displayed on the left side of the hardware monitor.

MSI’s board explorer is the final menu item on the right side. This gives the user a graphical based snapshot of what is plugged into the motherboard. Hovering the mouse cursor over the items will display the information about them, clicking on items such as the I/O panel shows more detail.

The overclocking menu is where all the advanced settings for the CPU are housed that allow the CPU and memory to be overclocked. Two menus are available; advanced and simple. Voltages for both memory and CPU can be adjusted here. I don’t overclock much, typically I get a 4.5 GHz overclock on my retail Intel i7-4770K at 2.48 v. I typically disable EIST and turbo boost when I run overclocked benchmarks.