MSI Z87A Gaming Series Motherboard Prototype Pictured
 

MSI displayed its upcoming Z87A Gaming Series motherboard. The company is yet to begin work on cosmetic details such as PCB color, heatsinks, component color scheme, etc., but a bulk of its development is complete. To begin with, the board uses a strong 16-phase VRM to power the CPU, which draws power from two 8-pin EPS connectors. The CPU is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting up to 64 GB of dual-channel DDR3 memory; and three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots in x16/NC/NC or x8/x8/NC or x8/x4/x4 configurations, depending on how they're populated. Four x1 slots make for the rest of its all-PCIe expansion slot area.

Storage connectivity on the Z87A Gaming Series includes eight SATA 6 Gb/s slots, two of which are driven by a third-party controller. 8-channel HD audio, gigabit Ethernet, eight USB 3.0 ports (six on the rear panel, two by header), dual-HDMI and DisplayPort display outputs; effectively make for the rest of the board. The same exact PCB could be used to create two SKUs, the Z87A Gaming Series, and the Z87A-GD65. Apart from a swankier color scheme and heatsink design, the Gaming Series variant could feature a few additional overclocking features.

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