MSI Z97 GAMING 5 LGA 1150 Intel Z97 DDR3 32GB ATX motherboard

Socket LGA 1150 ATX motherboard

The MSI Z97 GAMING 5 is an ATX motherboard built around the Intel Z97 chipset for LGA 1150 processors. It supports fourth and fifth generation Intel Core, Pentium and Celeron CPUs. Four DDR3 slots accept up to 32 GB of memory at speeds from 1066 MHz to 3200 MHz when overclocked. The board provides three PCIe 3.0 x16 slots and four PCIe 2.0 x1 slots for expansion cards.

Gamers and overclockers on Haswell or Broadwell

This board suits builders staying on the LGA 1150 platform who want multi-GPU flexibility, 7.1 channel audio from the Realtek ALC1150 codec and a Killer E2205 Ethernet controller for wired networking. Six USB 3.0 ports and eight USB 2.0 ports cover most peripheral needs. Users who need a newer socket, DDR3 memory is the only type supported, or integrated Wi-Fi should look at other platforms.

DDR3 memory limited to 32 GB maximum

The single specification that decides fit is the 32 GB ceiling on DDR3 memory across four slots. If your workload requires more RAM than this, the Z97 GAMING 5 cannot accommodate it and a different chipset or socket generation is required.