14 DAY TRIAL // Gaming motherboards abide by a standard rule: be overpowered or don't be at all. Thus, they have many things in common, which means that their makers need to put special effort into standing out. MSI chose the Killer gaming chip.
The new mainboard that Micro-Star International made is called Z87M GAMING and relies on Intel's 8-series Z87 chip, meaning it can welcome any of the latest Haswell fourth-generation CPUs.
The basics are easily enough gleamed from the photos of the newcomer: two PCI Express 3.0 slots, two PCI Express mini slots, four DDR3 memory slots, six SATA III ports, various pin headers, many video/USB/audio ports on the back panel, etc.
The Killer network chip is more important here. It can prioritize games over anything else taking up networking bandwidth, kind of like QoS protocol but better.
In addition to that, MSI included the Audio Boost technology (not much need for an explanation there).
Add to that MIL-STND-810G military class components and voila! A black and red, overpowered mATX platform. You even get Click BIOS 4, and the “all new two-stage one-second overclocking OC Genie 4” technology.
