MSI Haswell ITX motherboards revealed

Intel’s Haswell family is quickly shaping up to be a decent release, even though power consumption and heat generation are higher than its predecessor, Ivy Bridge. MSI has revealed three new ITX boards at the conference covering the three Intel chipsets.

Haswell boards have three chipsets for consumers to choose from – B85, H87 and Z87. There are some business-focused chipsets as well like P85, but most people won’t really go for them. MSI has had a good lineup of ITX motherboards for the Intel LGA1155 platform in the past and Haswell doesn’t change that.

MSI B85I

MSI H87I

MSI Z87I

It starts with the B85I, the version without a frill to be seen. It offers four SATA 6GB/s ports, a full-speed PCI-Express 3.0 slot, up to 32GB of dual-channel DDR3 RAM, four VRM phases and built-in m-PCI-E slot for hooking up a wireless card to the board. It only has HDMI and DVI video ports, Gigabit ethernet, two USB 3.0 ports for the front panel, 5.1 audio and four USB 2.0 ports at the back.

The H87I boosts that up with a bundled Realtek 802.11n Wi-Foimodule and antennae, heatsinks for the VRM phases and 7.1-channel audio. The Z87I is the flashy one, offering identical ports and features to the B85I and H87I, but also unlocking the multiplier controls to allow for some overclocking love. Most Haswell processors top out at 4.6GHz however, so the available headroom with a stock cooler will be quite limited.