MSI Big Bang Z77 Mpower Hand-Tested Overclocking Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,562 words · ~7 min read
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Welcome to my proper unboxing of the MSI Big Bang M Power. This is a Z77
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motherboard that changes the game of overclocking. And I'm actually sort of
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on board with what they're doing here. So, has a three-year warranty. It's got
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all the usual Z77 features, including support for the latest Intel Core i3,
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i5, and i7 processors on LG 1155,
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Windows 7, and Windows 8 compatible. There's that new logo right there. AMD
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Crossfire, NVIDIA SLI are supported. Virtue MVP is also supported, which
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means you've got things like their virtual VSYNC as well as performance
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boost. I haven't had that much experience with it being compatible with
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a wide variety of different titles, but hey, if you find it out that it works
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for the games that you play, then great enhanced components. So, you got their
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driver MOSFETs, you've got their OCPCB,
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that's an interesting thing to call it. Solid caps, uh, super far chokes, high-C
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caps. Great. So this is all their usual military class 3 stuff. Hybrid digital
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power. Interesting. Enhanced PWM design with hybrid digital power. Designed for
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overclocking on K SKU CPU. So yes, overclockable CPUs. 8 pin power for the
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CPU with a six pin auxiliary power for video cards. These are useful and I
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prefer a six pin to a Molex just because these days I hardly have any Molexes in
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my system and it's hard to like route one up there. Enhanced thermals. Okay.
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Twin frozer fourbased design. Interesting. total fan control with all
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four pin PWM fan connectors on board. You can customize them in the BIOS or in
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Windows and monitor and record all the fan speeds. You got your V check points
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so you can actually use a multimeter to check your voltages because softwarebased ones are not useful.
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Multibios 2. This has saved my bacon at least once before. Easy buttons, onboard
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power and reset. Clear SIMOS button on the back and a debug LED. Bluetooth and
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Wi-Fi are included as well as SATA 36 GB
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per second. You know what? All this information is stuff that we could see
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by just opening up the board. So, I'm sort of done with the outside of the box
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for now. Here's an overclocking guide. Very cool to have something like that
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included. Neat stuff. Okay. Next, we've got the IO shield, four SATA 36 Gbit per
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second cables, although it doesn't really make a difference. Antenna for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi
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presumably. Cool. All right, we got a
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flexible black SLI bridge. my very favorite kind and connectors to make
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those front panel connectors a little bit easier to do. Driver's disc, uh,
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quick installation guide, certificate of
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quality and stability. Now, actually, I'm going to set this aside and we are
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going to talk about it more later. Software and applications users guide,
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motherboard users guide, and V checkpoint cables so that you can
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actually, you know, plug something into them. All right, motherboard itself.
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Okay, I haven't even gotten into what's good about this board yet, you guys.
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This is a very, very exciting board for
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one particularly important reason, and that is the gorgeous matte black PC. No,
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that's not actually it. So, the matte black PCB is good, but let's go let's
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talk about what makes this board special. So, this certificate of quality
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and stability, we've seen this with products before. However, MSI has really
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stepped up their game with the M Power being OC certified. That's the
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terminology they're using here. OC certified performance power and PWM
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cooling. However, they really take it to the next level. Check this out. Military
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class burn-in test. Every single board,
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that means this board, the board you buy, the board your friend buys, has
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gone through strict tests to guarantee stable overclocking results. So they
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actually take every board, they install a CPU liquid cooler, which means the PWM
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is not getting any particular incidental air flow from their test bench. They
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overclock a K series CPU to 4.6 GHz or
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more depending on the CPU. Not every test platform is exactly the same. So a
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real overclock, like not, you know, an OCG overclock, like a real overclock.
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Then they put it in an unrealistically high temperature environment and they
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run Prime 95 to beat the snot out of the CPU at that overclock setting for 24
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hours plus. Crazy, right? Every single board
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is overclocking validated with an overclocked CPU. The odds of getting a
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dud empower board is basically nil
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because every single board is hand tested. That doesn't happen on regular
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motherboards. Very, very cool stuff. really stepping up their game right now,
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these MSI guys. All right, so let's cover the layout. There's your LG 1155
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socket. Lots of room around it for big coolers. Eight pin CPU connectors in its
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ideal location at the top left. You got your four uh DDR3 slots supporting dual
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channel memory. You've also got your onboard power connectors. This is my new
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favorite spot for them. There's your OCG, your reset, and your power. Uh
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because once you've got a bunch of cards installed, it's kind of hard to reach the ones that are down here or around
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here. 24 pin power connector in its ideal location. There's the auxiliary
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six pin for your graphics cards as well as your V checkpoints for checking the
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voltages. There's your post debug LED. And again, this is my new favorite
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location for this. The onboard USB3 headers at a right angle on the right
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hand edge of the board. Perfect. SATA 3 6 GB per second. Four SATA 2 3 GB per
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second ports. There's your multibio switch to switch between the two
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physical BIOS chips. You've got a couple front USB 2 ports, a couple uh headers,
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normal ones, and you've also got a high-owered one for charging things like
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an iPad. Okay, you've got aha due to bandwidth allocation limitations.
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Strongly recommended. Okay, so you want to use an Ivy Bridge processor if you're
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going to use this bottom slot. Otherwise, these ones will run at PCIe
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28x8x with a Sandy Bridge or PCIe 38X8X
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with an Ivy Bridge chip. You've got this is a fully PCIe board. So you got four
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PCIe 1X slots and then three PCIe 16X
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slots. However, physically they're 16 or 88 4 and this four runs off the chipset.
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So it's not as good of a four. So basically this is a dual cardboard.
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Moving right along to this is actually I think this is the best matte black PCB
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I've yet seen. Slick's giving me the thumbs up because it's so clean. Like
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you can hardly even see the traces. It just looks like if I change the angle a
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little bit you can see the traces sometimes probably but then other times you can't. It's like very stealthy
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looking. Let's have a look at the Twin Furer 4 inspired cooler. So, it's got a
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very neat shape to it that actually gives it a lot of surface area even though you can't see a lot of it. And
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it's using a nice thick heat pipe. I think MSI's branding for this used to be
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super pipe, but I haven't seen them really use that lately. Check it out.
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Phase LEDs. So, you can see how many of your 12 power phases are uh are active
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on the CPU at any given time. So, when you're doing something intensive, those are going to crank up to the top. And
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when you're not, they're going to stay right down near the bottom, which is kind of neat stuff because when you're
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not consuming a lot of power, fewer power phases being active is actually
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more efficient. So, there you go. You learned something today, unless you already knew that, in which case you
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didn't learn something today. All right, let's have a look at the back IO. You got your PS2 port. I still like to see
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that. Two USB 2.0 ports, six USB 3.0
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ports, your Bluetooth, your Wi-Fi, gigabit Ethernet is builtin, display
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port and HDMI to handle your a or your video out. Remember guys, you can use
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the onboard video here for your video transcoding functionality, and you can
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use your dedicated graphics card for gaming. You've got optical audio out as
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well as 7.1 audio out. So, thank you for checking out my unboxing of the Z77 M
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Power from MSI. And I think Slick's letting the camera fall a little bit
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there. And uh don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings,
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reviews, and other computer videos. And don't forget the most important thing about this board, hand tested. You want
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a board that works 100%. Okay, I can't
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say 100% but 99.99% it will work if you buy one
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because it's hand tested.