Scan has an interesting gaming bundle on offer consisting of an MSI Z97 Gaming 5 motherboard and an Intel Core i7-4790K CPU. But is this a setup worth spending your hard-earned pounds on?
The MSI Z97 Gaming 5 is an immensely stylish and capable ATX, LGA 1150 motherboard. It has four DDR3 DIMM slots for a maximum of 32GB of overclocked 3300MHz memory, three PCIe x16 slots, four PCIe x1 slots and an M.2 port. The rear IO consists of a gigabit Ethernet port, four USB 3.0, four USB 2.0, VGA, DVI, HDMI and six audio jacks.
The dominating flashes of red on this imposing black motherboard are impressive, to say the least. More importantly, though, under all that style is the fact that MSI uses the best possible components when manufacturing its range of motherboards – even more so for its gaming boards. On the Z97 Gaming 5 you’ll find an isolated audio PCB, a dedicated Creative Sound Blaster Cinema 2 processor, military class 4 components for stable overclocking, circuit protection and a host of other tantalising features.
The processor used in this bundle is the equally good Haswell-based Intel i7-4790K. This quad-core, eight-thread unlocked processor has a core clock speed of 4GHz, with a boost to 4.4GHz and an L3 cache of 8MB. Overclocking is good too, with some enthusiasts getting a stable 4.9GHz with standard cooling and going higher on more specialist coolers and PSUs.
Although the combination of motherboard and processor are indeed enough to raise an eyebrow or two, the entire bundle is a little sparse on other elements. As you can well see, there’s no memory included or a CPU cooler for that matter. Perhaps if Scan was to thrown in 8GB of RAM, or even some other component of a gaming nature, it would make the £378.68 cost a little easier to take.
On the other hand, if you’re willing to factor in the cost of memory and CPU cooler, then you'll have a powerful combination that will offer you some great gaming visuals. And if money is no object, then consider a three-way SLI or CrossFire setup on the MSI Z97 Gaming 5 board.
Advanced gamers will certainly appreciate the motherboard and processor used here; the chances are they’ll already have something in place to take care of cooling, memory and other factors. For the average gamer, though, this package is a little too expensive and lacking in extras. ‘Future proofing’ is a phrase that’s easily bandied about, and it can be taken into consideration in this instance as well.
If you have a plan for a powerful gaming PC in mind, then this bundle will allow you to hit the ground running. The same applies if you’re after a core system speed boost and the opportunity to add more components at a later date. However, as we said, entrylevel gamers will get more for their money with some of the other many deals from the Scan pages.