MSI Z87-G45 GAMING Pro Reviews

The MSI Z87-G45 Gaming is a great gaming grade board at a awesome value with excellent features for the price.

In the end the MSI Z87-G45 comes with quite a lot to offer. The price sits just below the GD65 and loses only a few features, some cared more for than others. The overall board appears about the same minus the heat pipes on the VRMs and a couple OC Genie buttons, so you can't deny the looks of this board unless you hate dragons or don't want red in your case. The voltage check points on the board, Audio Boost technology, Killer Network features, and an awesome three-year warenty is well worth putting up the little extra cash from what you might normally get.

It's pretty funny to me that the benchmarking results had the MSI Z87-G45 GAMING provide enough performance to take the top spot in many of the tests, beating out every other tested board to date. For a "medium-grade" product priced at under $160 USD, that really caught my attention as it confirmed the "feel" the build gave me when I was using it; it was somehow faster without any clear indication as to why. I already mentioned that some board makers use custom Turbo profiling to get that extra performance, and that certainly seems to be the case with what is offered by the MSI Z87-G45 GAMING. So, for those not interested in overclocking but decent GAMING-focused performance right out of the box, the MSI Z87-G45 is pretty much the perfect choice if you dig the red and black color scheme.