MSI Z97A Gaming 6 meets up Intel Broadwell i7 5775C

Question

It’s been awhile since I posted short reviews of PC hardware stuff but today I have something up my sleeve. We will take a quick glance on MSI’s Z97A Gaming 6 motherboard together with Intel’s new Broadwell Processor.
Box design is same as any MSI Gaming motherboard before with black/red theme, dragon logo in front and PCB trace prints all over the box. The only difference is the new USB 3.1 Type-C featured logo on top. Another thing, if you noticed the naming rule for this model. You have the letter “A” after the Z97. “A” stands for the USB 3.1 functionality.
Flipping the box, you have an overview of the input/output ports, specifications and brief information about the features of the Z97A Gaming 6 motherboard.
Specifications:
•CPU Support – 4th and 5th Generation Intel Core Processors
•CPU Socket – LGA1150
•Chipset - Intel Z97 Express Chipset
•Graphics Interface – 3x PCI-3.0 x16 slots with 4th and 5th Gen Intel Core processors
•Display Interface – HDMI, DVI, D-Sub – Requires Processor Graphics
•Memory Support – 4 DIMMs, Dual Channel DDR3-3200(OC)
•Expansion Slots – 4x PCI-Ex1 slots
•M.2/SATA – 1x M.2 Slot + 6x SATA 6GB/s (2 ports reserved for SATA Express)
•SATA RAID – RAID 0, 1, 51 10 – Only available on ports SATA1 to SATA6
•USB Port – 1x USB 3.1 Type-C + 6x USB 3.0 + 6x USB 2.0
•LAN – Killer E2205 Gigabit Ethernet
•Audio – 8-Channel (7.1) HD Audio
Main Features:
•Audio Boost2 – Provides true quality, less noise and crystal clear sound with the aid of high audio quality components such as Japanase Nichicon capacitors, dual audio amplifiers, EMI shielding, audio isolation line, golden audio jacks and direct audio power.
•Killer E2200 – Built for maximum performance for online games and high-quality audio and video streaming.
•USB Audio Power – Continuously delivers stable 5V when connecting multiple USB devices, where traditional USB solutions fall short. This is highly noticeable with high-quality external USB DACs, making sure you can continue to enjoy the crystal clear audio standard you expect.
•USB 3.1 Type-C – Allows speeds up to 10Gb/s which is twice faster than a regular USB 3.0 connection. Type-C is reversible with double sided connections for easier plugging in of your devices.
•Multi-GPU – the board is designed to have spaces in between multi-graphic cards configurations to maximize air flow.
•Gaming-App –Allows simultaneous control of both Gaming motherboard & video card’s overclocking feature. Choose from Silent, Gaming or OC mode.
•Xsplit Gamecaster V2 – Lets you record your gaming moments and broadcast your live gameplay session to Twitch, YouTube, UStream and more. Enjoy 6 months premium license for free.
Next, for the bundle we have the following
•Origin of MSI Gaming
•User Guide
•Door Hanger
•Quick Installation Guide
•DVD Utility Disc
•SATA label sticker
•Black IO Plate with soft static shielding
•SLI Bridge
•Audio direct power cable
•M-Connector for easy installation of cables to headers
•2x 90 degrees SATA 6GB/s cable
•MSI Gaming Case Badge
And there you have it my friend, MSI’s Z97A-Gaming 6 motherboard.  Sleek isn’t it?!
This is a 4-layer PCB with matte black finish complimenting the red stripes for both VRM & bottom part heatsinks. There is a total of 8 power phases which is enough to squeeze out more juice from the processor during overclocking. Military Class components make the board sturdy, stable and efficient. You can see them all over the board but specifically more are placed around the processor socket area.
Before getting close with other parts of the board, here are the input/output rear ports. All red ports are part of MSI’s gaming features. Starting from the left is a PS2 combo port capable of autosensing keyboard or mouse and below it are 2x USB 2.0 ports. Both internally are gold plated to protect against oxidation and increase the lifetime 10x longer when plugging/unplugging devices. It also makes the mouse or keyboard more responsive in games.
Next, you have a wide range of display terminal options. Specifically VGA, DVI and HDMI ports and just above that is a Digital SPDIF audio terminal. The small port there is the USB 3.1 type-c connector and beside it are the Killer E2205 Gigabit LAN and 2x USB 3.0 ports. Lastly, 6 analog gold plated audio jacks with one dedicated amplified output optimized for studio-grade headgear.
Did you notice that chrome dragon on the Dragon Claw VRM heatsink before?
I really like how the components are laid out around the socket, no obstructions for installing any 3rd party market coolers out there in the market.
8pin power connector for powering up the processor and MSI manage to put a M.2 socket just above the 1st 16x PCIe slot. M.2 uses PCIe 2x bus and takes full length 2280 and 2260 M.2 devices.
4x DDR3 DIMM slots capable of speeds up to 3200MHz with max capacity of 32GB. On top of the 24pin power connector are the voltage check points. You can just tap your digital multi-tester on the read points to get real-time voltages of hardware components like the processor, memory and system agent.
The board is packed with PCIe connectors that starts with PCIe 1x and runs through 16x, 1x, 1x, 8x, 1x to 4x. If you are planning to do multi-graphics card setup, just go for a dual configuration only as the last video card slot is crippled to 4x bandwidth. At the bottom-most part are headers like USB 2.0, HD Audio, Power/Reset/HDD LED/Power LED and also present here is the debug LED for easy troubleshooting of basic bootup problems.
On the left side is where the isolated Audio Boost system is found. From the audio capacitors, amplifier chips, Realtek audio chip and Audio power header are put together into one place.
6x SATA 6GB/s ports are available but some will be lost once you utilize the SATA Express connection. RAID configurations can be set to 0/1/5 and 10. You also have here another USB 3.0 front header in a 90 degree position for better cable management.
Moving on, here are some handy software features of the MSI Gaming motherboard.
•MSI Eco Center –  With this, you can turn off or disable certain ports or connectors of the board.
•MSI Gaming App which I already discussed earlier
•Sound Blaster Cinema 2 – Improving more the audio quality of Audio Boost 2
•MSI Fast Boot  & Go2Bios – Shortcut command software to enter BIOS right away after a restart.
•MSI Command Center – The All in One Center to tweak and overclock your motherboard, fans, memory, built-in graphics card and processor.
MSI Command Center lets you enable the OC Genie function through Windows and make use of the RAMDisk application for high data read and write performance
Here is another exciting part of the review. Intel’s flagship LGA-1150 Broadwell i7-5775C.  This is a 14nm die shrink of Haswell which was built on 22nm with a few tweaks and rated speed of 3.3Ghz (Turbo 3.7GHz). Being 14nm in die size, results to a lower power consumption and lesser heat. TDP is only at 65W but I guess Intel might be releasing soon a Broadwell based on 88W with higher frequency.
You have here is the first set of Broadwell to be launched in the market. As for the naming rule goes, I’m not really sure why Intel use “C” this time for their unlocked multiplier processors while “R” is for the BGA (Ball Grid Array) embedded to the board package. 
*Crystalwell is the codename of the L4 cache (eDRAM) featured in the Iris Pro-enabled Haswell CPUs
Another best feat of Broadwell is its integrated graphics chip – Iris Pro 6200. It utilizes the extra eDRAM L4 Cache to gain more memory bandwidth. The architecture also provides faster 3d and compute performance
•20% more computes and 50% higher sampler throughput
•Microarchitecture improvements for increased Geometry, Z, Pixel Fill Performance
•More Thermal Headroom with 14nm Process
•Scalable Architecture
•Continued Focus on Gaming with support for Direct X* 11.2 & OpenGL* 4.3
•OpenCL 1.2 and 2.0 (with Shared Virtual Memory Support) for GPU Compute
You will be amaze how the Iris Pro 6200 performs with popular games title today. Benchmarks will be shown later too and the only thing I could say “We have a new IGP king!!!”.
Here comes the good part where the motherboard and processor meets up. They will be put to the test to show off some benchies scores
Test System Configuration:
•Processor: Intel i7-5775C 3.3Ghz / 3.7Ghz Turbo
•Motherboard: MSI Z97A Gaming 6
•Integrated Graphics: Intel Iris Pro 6200
•Memory: Kingston HyperX 2x4GB DDR3 2133MHz
•SSD: Kingston HyperX 3k 128GB
•PSU: Antec TPQ 1200W
Software:
Windows 7 64Bit SP1, latest downloadable CPU-Z & GPU-Z, Cinebench R15 & R11.5, PCMark 7, Heaven Benchmark, 3dMark13 , Catzilla
Games:
Far Cry 4 and Call of Duty Advanced Warfare
Catzilla is a benchmark program with impressive animation. It tests your computer graphics capabilities if it can run the latest games today or watch HD movies in best quality. It can also suggest what hardware modules of your computer should be replaced in order to get best performance.
PCMark 7 is a complete PC benchmarking solution that measure performance under common use scenarios or at the hardware component level. It includes 7 tests combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming.
Heaven software is a GPU-intensive benchmark software that tests your graphics card to the limits. This can be used to determine the stability of a GPU under stressful conditions, as well as check the cooling system’s potential under maximum heat output
Basic mode uses DirectX 9
Extreme mode is DirectX 11
Maxon Cinebench Software tests both CPU and Graphics Card Performance. I use version R11.5 and R15 of Cinebench
CPU test scenario uses all of your system’s processing power to render a photorealistic 3D Scene. This scene makes use of various algorithms to stress all available processor cores. 
R11.5 CPU Result: 8.52
For the Graphic test side, the procedure uses a complex 3D scene depicting a car chase which measures the performance of your graphics card in OpenGL mode. The performance depends on various factors, such as the GPU processor on your hardware, on the drivers used. The graphics card has to display a huge amount of geometry and textures.
R11.5  GPU Result: 2074.43
R15 CPU Result: 792CB
R15 GPU Result: 81.63
3dMark13 Cloud Gate is a new test that is designed for Windows notebooks and typical home PCs. Cloud Gate includes two graphics tests and a physics test. Cloud Gate uses a DirectX 11 engine limited to Direct3D feature level 10 making it suitable for testing DirectX 10 compatible hardware.
Fire Strike is a showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for today's high-performance gaming PCs. It features real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.
Lastly, game benchmark results of Intel Iris Pro 6200. Resolution at 1920x1080 with medium graphics quality.
We know how intensive Far Cry 4 game is but Iris Pro 6200 was able to handle it
These are the game settings
Call of Duty Advanced Warfare baby!!! And it’s fast and smooth!!!!
So that concludes my short review. The Gaming 6 is quite similar with the Gaming 5 design except for the IO Ports, inclusion of the USB 3.1 function and SATA Express port.  So if you are planning to build your gaming system now, it’s good to have these new functions as to make your system future proof. I’m sure there will be lots of USB 3.1 devices in the future, be it smartphones or storage devices. Aside from this, Z97 chipset motherboards are compatible with the latest Intel Broadwell processors. I’m sure you were amazed upon seeing the performance of the Intel Iris Pro 6200 in games. The IGP is capable of playing latest games smoothly even at high resolutions.
More reviews to come and it’s nice to be back

Answer 1

Thanks for the tip Henry!  As mentioned, this will be my last resort...
Pat
Quote from: HenryW on Today at 21:49:31 I normally test any build of mine on a sheet of plain brown cardboard cut from a box. I always do...