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MSI Z77A-G43 Socket 1155 Motherboard Review

Motherboards/Intel S1155 by leeghoofd @ 2012-10-04

Mostly we cover high end motherboards at the Shrimps due to our enthusiast reviewing nature. However not everybody has the funds to opt for a 200 or more Euros board. Sometimes a balance has to be found between the different components used, to stay below a certain budget. Most compromises have to be made in onboard features. Users tend to cash out more on the fastest CPU and/or GPU they can afford. In builds it's usually with motherboards where cutbacks are done and sometimes even a motherboard with a lower specced chipset is chosen. For socket 1155 MSI offers the budget minded user the choice to be able to buy a motherboard, based on the high end socket 1155 Intel Z77 chipset, yet all at a very affordable price. That's where the Z77A-G43 pops up, time to give the board a spin in the Madshrimps lab.

Conclusion

The MSI Z77A-G43 leaves me with a mixed feeling. It's one of, if not the the cheapest Z77 chipset based motherboards out there. Secondly it has what it takes to run a daily 4500Mhz stable clock. But the performance, especially when the CPU get's fully loaded is a bit less then other motherboards equipped with the same chipset.

When running stock, the Turbo function is not up to the same standards to what it's competitors use. However our test suite is always run overclocked to exclude such BIOS implementations. Yet the performance is sometimes very puzzling, not that it will be a big deal in daily usage. It's not like games will become unplayable because you opted to go for this MSI board. However take into consideration that the performance difference, in worst case scenario, can rise up to 10%. MSI is looking into it and hopefully a new bios version will raise the performance bar.

The overclocking performance for a budget minded board was more then adequate. Running an Ivy Bridge quad core CPU at 4500mhz is more than suitable and might even be overkill for the users that will buy these types of motherboards, hence why we forgive the choice of the MSI bios team to cripple the VCore adjustments.

RAM clocking is more than suitable IF your kit has got a decent pre-programmed XMP 1.3 profile. Due to the lack of some bios settings/voltages it's hard to fine tune for stability. Same remark though as for the CPU overclocking part, most end users will end up installing 1333 or even max 1600MHz DIMMs. So we have to pardon the board again.

All in all the MSI Z77A-G43 has remained a very stable board during our test period. The price is more than right at 97 euros. Especially since it has got close to full functionality of the Z77 chipset. No cutbacks have to be made regarding daily overclocking, not even at this price level.

The G43 might be the perfect choice for your budget oriented setup, being it with or without any overclocking requirements. This MSI Z77A-G43 has got you covered. If you are looking for more speed or features then it's better to opt for a more feature rich board, not only on the hardware side but also on the BIOS part. If MSI could tweak the BIOS to unleash a little extra performance then this board would be highly recommended for budget restricted computers. For now, we award the G43 board with the Madshrimps Value award.

PROS:

price tag sub 100 euros
Z77 chipset
mild OCing potential supported

CONS:

BIOS needs performance tuning
upright S-ATA ports

Thanks to Koen from Mystar for the G43 review sample.

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