Final Thoughts And Rating
...MSI really needs to encourage adoption of the new interface by making it possible for retailers to sell this board for, say, £99.99.MSI has taken the solid groundwork laid down by the Z77A-G45 motherboard and used it as the preferred choice when releasing a Thunderbolt-equipped version. Now bumping up all graphics slots to PCIe 3.0 and substituting the G45's DVI output for Thunderbolt, the appropriately named Z77A-G45 Thunderbolt uses the goodness present in the latest Intel 7-series chipsets to solid effect.
The one rather large elephant in the room, however, is the £45 hike in price over the (almost identical) non-Thunderbolt model. MSI really needs to encourage adoption of the new interface by making it possible for retailers to sell this board for, say, £99.99. Drop it down to that price and it's primed for recommendation. As it is, the high street price of £120-plus ultimately counts against it, especially when Thunderbolt devices are few and far between.
The Good
Clean layout, good looks
Solid overclocking performance
Thunderbolt portThe Bad
Large price premium for Thunderbolt
Sacrifices enthusiast-orientated featuresHEXUS Rating
MSI Z77A-G45 Thunderbolt
HEXUS Where2Buy
The MSI Z77A-G45 Thunderbolt is available to purchase from Scan Computers.
HEXUS Right2Reply
At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.
Related Reading
5 Asus shares its Intel Z690 motherboard guide
And rivals such as Gigabyte, MSI and EVGA outline their Z690 chipset offerings.
1 Asus ROG Strix Z690-I Gaming Wi-Fi motherboard images leak
Mini-ITX board uses daughterboards to pack in features but maintain its diminutive footprint.
21 Diagrams of 12VHPWR 600W connectors for GPUs spotted
Power connector is part of the PCIe 5.0 standard and rumoured for the RTX 3090 Ti.
