Gigabyte and MSI introduce their Z97 and H97 motherboards

MSI and Gigabyte have released a large number of Intel Series 9 motherboards. The boards based on the Z97 Express and H97 Express chipsets are aimed at gamers, among others. The Series 9 chipset is for Intel’s Haswell Refresh and Broadwell chips.

Intel will come shortly with the Haswell Refresh: the Haswel processors will receive a small speed increase and the chipset will receive an update to Series 9. The upcoming Broadwell processors will also have to make do with this chipset. The Series 9 consists of the Z97 for the high-end and the H97 for the mainstream. The main improvements concern support for PCI Express based M.2 SSDs and the presence of the SATA Express interface.

MSI comes with a large number of Z97 Express models in the company’s Gaming series. There are the Z97I Gaming for mini-itx and the Z97M Gaming micro-atx. MSI also comes with the atx motherboards Z97 Gaming 3, Z97 Gaming 5, and Z97 Gaming 7, in addition to the Z97-G43 Gaming, Z97-G45 Gaming and Z97-GD65 Gaming. Prices range from $100 to $220.

Priced from $200 to $400, the Taiwanese manufacturer’s Z97 OC boards are a bit more expensive, but these models also have functionality that helps with overclocking the CPU and GPU. This series includes the Z97 MPower, the Z97 MPower MAX AC and the Z97 XPower AC. In addition, MSI releases a large number of Z97 Classic and H97 Classic boards.

Gigabyte comes with a large number of Z97 and H97 boards. For example, there is the G1 Gaming series for mainstream gamers, which includes the GA-Z97X-Gaming-G1, -GT, -7, -5 and -3, in addition to the G1 Gaming Sniper H6 and Z6. The Ultra Durable series of high-quality components according to Gigabyte includes the GA-Z97X-UD models, the GA-Z97X-SLI and the GA-Z97P-D3 models.

There is also the Overclocking Series with the GA-Z97X-SOC Force and the GA-Z97X-SOC and finally the Black Edition line consists of the GA-Z97X-Gaming G1 WIFI-BK, the GA-Z97X-UD5H-BK and the GA-Z97X-UD3H-BK.