MSI's upcoming Z87-G45 gaming motherboard have been spotted at various Chinese forums but due to NDA those sites are now removing the pictures. We were fast enough to grab a few of these screenshots which show the upcoming Z87-G45 Gaming motherboard from MSI.

MSI Z87-G45 Gaming Motherboard Spotted and Tested

Redquasarrevealed one of the two Z87 gaming motherboards from MSI. We assume that this would be the MSI Z87-G45 Gaming since its packed with a few features compared to the flagship Z87-GD65 Gaming. Just like its predecessor aka the Z77A-GD45, the new motherboard carries the same Dragon (Red/Black) design theme. Even the dragon logo embedded on the PCH looks the same so other than offering compatibility with the latest Haswell processors we don't think the motherboard has much to offer.

Other notable features include the addition of the latest Audio boost chip (Sound Blaster Core) which would offer enhanced audio quality to users through the 7.1 channel audio jack. An 8-Pin power connector provides juice to the CPU socket while a few switches which include OC Genie 4, Power On/Off, Reset, Debug LED are located at the bottom of the board while a clear CMOS button is placed at the I/O panel. There's also a Multi-BIOS switch located near the DIMM slots.

Expansion slots include three PCI-e 3.0 x16, three PCI-e 3.0 x1 and an M-PCI-e combo slot near the top most PCI-e 3.0 x16 slot. The Z87-G45 Gaming motherboard supports both SLI and CrossFireX multi GPU functionality. Storage options include 6 SATA 6 GB/s ports while I/O includes 6 USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit LAN, VGA, DVI, HDMI, PS/2 and LAN ports.

Although the motherboard does look great but it would still be outcasted by its bigger brother the Z87A-GD65 Gaming. Other than the Gaming lineup, MSI is also preparing their Z87 XPower and Z87 MPower MAX mobos while details for more Z87 motherboards is expected to be released shortly since MSI held a closed meeting specifically detailing their Z87 Gaming motherboards lineup. Other lineups which have been leaked recently include ASUS, Gigabyte, ASRock and ECS.

Benchmarks and pictures of the retail Core i7-4770K and Core i5-4570K can be seen below, do note that the processor was overclocked in same cases around 4.5 - 4.9 GHz.