case fan header location msi z97 gaming 7

CASE FAN HEADER LOCATION MSI Z97 GAMING 7 MANUAL
CASE FAN HEADER LOCATION MSI Z97 GAMING 7 PRO
CASE FAN HEADER LOCATION MSI Z97 GAMING 7 SERIES

A row of DIP switches provides hardware-level custom gain control. The word “Gaming” is strategically placed in its name, so Gigabyte’s cheapest four-way SLI-capable board also boasts a replaceable TI OPA2134 op-amp to help gamers push their high-impedance headphones. Unless its usability and durability is something you’re more concern of, the Sabertooth Z97 Mark S will be an option worth to consider for – paying RM 1188 for a durable motherboard that will last for quite a long while -5 year warranty seems reasonable, or perhaps as a limited edition collectable if you’re a die-hard TUF fan.

CASE FAN HEADER LOCATION MSI Z97 GAMING 7 SERIES

With the absent of Q-code indicator and components not really made for achieving extremely high overclocking results like the ROG series motherboards, you might want to reconsider before getting yourself a TUF board for overclocking purposes. Overclocking wise, the TUF series was never easy to deal with the board from the beginning. Another great feature that we really like is the TUF Fortifier (metal backplate) that strengthens the PCB to overcome bending caused by heavy CPU coolers. Personally, we really like the idea of covering the motherboard with a thermal armour to reduce dust intake with an additional assistant fan to provide sufficient ventilation to keep the components at a comfortable operating temperature. In terms of usability and durability, ASUS did a fine job with the Thermal Radar 2 that is made specifically for TUF series motherboards is a good and easy to use thermal management utility that works intelligently with the TUF ICe microchip to achieve optimal heat dissipation of your current system with just a single click. The only trouble we find is, building a white-themed build isn’t easy as black is a much more universal/favourable colour and it’s not easy to find colour matching components locally, especially for the graphics card – not to mention that there’s no white coloured graphics card from ASUS at the moment. Personally we find the Sabertooth Z97 Mark S as a premium collectable for the loyal TUF fans since the very beginning. When it comes to aesthetic aspects, the Sabertooth Z97 Mark S has its own unique presentation in colour. Result of sequential read/write for both Crucial M500 120GB (left) and Corsair Neutron 120GB (right), everything seems fine at this point. It’s not a big improvement but it’s still a good result for a non-UASP enabled device to break the performance barrier with the USB 3.0 Boost technology from ASUS. We’ve ran a quick benchmark to test the USB 3.0 boost and we’re definitely seeing an improvement where the initial benchmark result without USB 3.0 boost enabled (left) reaches a bottleneck with higest read speed not even able reach 80MB/s reading speed while benchmark result with USB 3.0 boost enabled (right) is able to reach above 80MB/s with ease.

CASE FAN HEADER LOCATION MSI Z97 GAMING 7 PRO

We did manage to overclock our Corsair Vengeance Pro 1600MHz to 2400MHz under XMP with timing of 11-13-13-1T at 1.65V that runs stable enough to survive prime95 stress test.

CASE FAN HEADER LOCATION MSI Z97 GAMING 7 MANUAL

Using the manual overclocking method, we’re able to achieve 4.6GHz but with a maximum temperature of 82☌. As the EZ Tuning Wizard takes temperature reading into account, it only manage to push the CPU to 4.5GHz with maximum temperature of 76☌. We’ve tried overclocking the CPU with EZ Tuning Wizard and Manual Overclocking, the result is shown in the table above.

Case fan header location msi z97 gaming 7