[Review] MSI H87I - A mighty tiny "H"overclocker

[eminus]

[Review] MSI H87I - A mighty tiny "H"overclocker

CPU

• 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 / Core™ i5 / Core™ i3 / Pentium® / Celeron® processors for LGA 1150 socket
Please refer to CPU Support for compatible CPU; the above description is for reference only.



Chipset

• Intel® H87 Express Chipset



Main Memory

• Support two DDR3 DIMMs 1066/1333/1600 MHz, up to 16GB Max
- Supports Dual-Channel mode
- Supports non-ECC, un-buffered memory
- Supports Intel® Extreme Memory Profile (XMP)



Slots
• 1 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slot
- 1 x Half-size mini-PCIe slot*
*An Intel Centrion Wireless-N 2230 Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card pre-installed.



On-Board SATA

• SATAIII controller integrated in Intel® H87 chipset
- Up to 6Gb/s transfer speed.
- Supports four SATAIII ports (SATA1~4) by H87
- Supports Intel Smart Response Technology*
- Supports Intel Rapid Start Technology and Intel Smart Connect Technology*
* Supports Intel Core processors on Windows 7 and Windows 8

• RAID
- SATA1~4 support Intel® Rapid Storage Technology enterprise (AHCI/ RAID 0/ 1/ 5/ 10) by Intel® H87



USB
• 6x USB 3.0 ports (4 ports on the back panel, 2 ports available through the internal USB connectors)
• 4x USB 2.0 ports (2 ports on the back panel, 2 ports available through the internal USB connectors)



Audio

• Realtek® ALC892 Codec
- 7.1-Channel High Definition Audio
- Supports S/PDIF output



Wireless LAN (optional)
• Wi-Fi/Bluetooth mini-PCIe card with Intel Centrion Wireless-N 2230 chip.
- Supports Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, dual band up to 300 Mbps speed.
- Supports Intel® Wireless Display (WiDi)



Bluetooth(optional)
• Wi-Fi/Bluetooth mini-PCIe card with Intel Centrion Wireless-N 2230 chip.
- Supports Bluetooth v4.0 (includes BLE* and Bluetooth 3.0+HS
* BLE: Bluetooth Low Energy



LAN

• 1 x Realtek® 8111G Gigabit LAN controller



Internal I/O Connectors
- 1 x ATX 24-Pin power connector
- 1 x 4-pin ATX 12V power connector
- 1 x 4-pin CPU fan connectors
- 1 x 4-pin system fan connectors
- 1 x Clear CMOS jumper
- 4 x Serial ATAIII connectors
- 1 x USB 2.0 connector (supports additional 2 USB 2.0 ports)
- 1 x USB 3.0 connector (supports additional 2 USB 3.0 ports)
- 1 x Serial port connector
- 2 x System panel connectors
- 1 x Front Panel Audio connector



Back Panel I/O Ports
- 1 x PS/2 keyboard/ mouse combo port
- 1 x Clear CMOS button
- 1 x GO2BIOS button
- 2 x USB 2.0 ports
- 4 x USB 3.0 ports
- 1 x Optical S/PDIF-out connector
- 1 x RJ45 LAN Jack
- 1 x 6 in 1 audio jack
- 1 x DisplayPort with max. resolution of 4096x2160@24Hz, 24bpp/ 3840x2160@60Hz, 24bpp
- 1 x HDMI® port with max. resolution up to 4096x2160@24Hz, 24bpp/2560x1600@60Hz, 24bpp/1920x1080@60Hz, 36bpp
- 1 x DVI-I port with max. resolution up to 1920x1200 @60Hz, 24bpp
MSI Reminds You...
• This motherboard supports dual-display function by any two onboard graphics output ports (HDMI+DVI,DVI+DisplayPort or DisplayPort+HDMI).


BIOS
• The motherboard BIOS provides "Plug & Play" BIOS which detects the peripheral devices and expansion cards of the board automatically.
• The motherboard provides a Desktop Management Interface(DMI) function which records your motherboard specifications.



Dimension
• 6.7 in. x 6.7 in. (17 cm x 17 cm) Mini-ITX Form Factor

In the flesh!!

Military Class IV Components

 

[eminus]

Funny a mistake here on the sticker as it shows Z87I hehehe

 

[eminus]

 

[eminus]

The Test

Mobo: MSI H87I
Processor: Intel i5 4670K
Cooler: Kraken x40
Ram: Patriot Viper IEM 2133Mhz
GPU: MSI 7970 Power Edition Boost Edition
SSD: Samsung 830 256GB
HDD: mix
PSU: Super Flower Golden King 750w Platinum

Processor Overclocked: 4.7Ghz @ 1.256v
Ram: 1600Mhz @CL 7-9-8-20-1T

Sisoft Sandra

Aida 64

3DMark 11 and 3DMark

Cinebench 11

 

[eminus]

Super Pi

Gaming Metro Last Light and Shogun 2

Processor Overclocked: 4.8Ghz @ 1.3v
Ram: 1600Mhz @CL 7-9-8-20-1T

 

[eminus]

CLICK BIOS 4

WOW 80x

 

[eminus]

 

[eminus]

My Take:

This is my first time to try and review an ITX motherboard and I was impressed of the capability of the MSI H87I motherboard. As we all know that this time around not only the Z series motherboards are the only one that can overclock the unlock Haswell processors, the H and B series are able to overclock the unlock Haswell processors as well. This motherboard have the maximum VCORE of 1.3v so you are limited to that on up to where you can push your processor, I am not sure if future BIOS updates it will get increased. The MSI B and H series motherboards can only support up to 1600Mhz memory clock but it won't limit you on the timings. There are now a lot of options for you to fiddle in the BIOS for overclocking.

The MSI Haswell motherboards have greatly improved as you can see in this MSI H87I motherboard you can now manually set the multiplier and yet still retain the EIST functionality of the processor. The MSI Click BIOS 4 has also improved it has now a lot of options especially for the memory and to think this is an H series motherboard. It has native support for Windows 8 fast boot. The Military Class 4 components gives you the peace of mind of stability and performance. Going for a daily 4.5Ghz is very easy to do with this MSI H87I motherboard.

There are issues I have encontered like in CPU-Z where in it does not properly detect the correct voltage being set, I would think that later BIOS updates would fix this. Also the first time it did not detect my USB keyboard and mouse but good thing is that this motherboard have a PS2 port in which I used my keyboard to install the Intel USB driver. Other than that I dont see any issues.

As for the pricing this currently have an SRP of $189 and is now available in SLS, I would say the pricing is decent given the quality of components you get and the great features that this motherboard have.

 

[tErOn]

nice job!! support!

 

[clon22]

Nice review there bro.

This is especially nice.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-yFCqIYDEz_A/UeuycmaNahI/AAAAAAAANNM/ypWJHyDrxAU/w1580-h889-no/4.8_OC_1.3v_CL7_auto_GPU_1220_3dmark11.png

Actually, Intel "B" & "H" series do not support OC.
It was an err on Intel's part when they accidentally released unlocked bios to manufacturers.
They have since asked everyone to have the proper updated the bios on their individual web support/downloads etc.

Well, its up to the users if they want to update to the official bios.
That is also hence why only 1600 as B/H by default only do 1600 officially.

So do note that since they do not officially support OC by Intel,
its up to users discreet.

Good write up overall bro.

 

[KeYoKe]

nice write up bro its such a small board

 

[yude82]

Question about the MSI H87I

what kind of tower air cooler can it support. Since the CPU slot is quite close the pcie slot, there is a chance some of the bigger cpu cooler will block out the slot.

 

[eminus]

Question about the MSI H87I

what kind of tower air cooler can it support. Since the CPU slot is quite close the pcie slot, there is a chance some of the bigger cpu cooler will block out the slot.

any mid size tower cooler not exceeding 120mm should do..so better look for those tower coolers using 120mm fan and below

 

[yude82]

I assume a hyper 212X should be able to fit?

 

[eminus]

yes it should be fine for hyper 212

 

[m3 th3 last]

Nice review there bro.

This is especially nice.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-yFCqIYDEz_A/UeuycmaNahI/AAAAAAAANNM/ypWJHyDrxAU/w1580-h889-no/4.8_OC_1.3v_CL7_auto_GPU_1220_3dmark11.png

Actually, Intel "B" & "H" series do not support OC.
It was an err on Intel's part when they accidentally released unlocked bios to manufacturers.
They have since asked everyone to have the proper updated the bios on their individual web support/downloads etc.

Well, its up to the users if they want to update to the official bios.
That is also hence why only 1600 as B/H by default only do 1600 officially.

So do note that since they do not officially support OC by Intel,
its up to users discreet.

Good write up overall bro.

Lol, seems like some of the manufacturer not listening.
E.g. Asus, Asrock & ECS. went entirely the opposite instead and release BIOS updated to Allow for non "z" overclock.

Like saying to intel, "You mad bro?"

 

[clon22]

Well, who doesn't want to capitalise on it.
As longer the user know what they're doing, it should be fine.
(most I guess) @@

 

[yude82]

[NEWS] Intel Cracks Down on Motherboard Vendors Offering Overclocking on non-Z Chipset

 

[clon22]

[NEWS] Intel Cracks Down on Motherboard Vendors Offering Overclocking on non-Z Chipset

Doubt they can do much.
Unless there is a crucial update which forces ppl to want to update.
Regardless, thanks for the news.