Perhaps it is the wrong time to link to the MSI website, but fine. In a press release MSI has taken a very interesting stance in the non-Z87 overclocking debate. As you know, about a month ago ASRock issued the news of enabling the CPU overclocking capability of the B81, B85 and H87-based motherboard series. Following ASRock's news, ECS, ASUS, GIGABYTE and Biostar also announced their the new feature, leaving MSI as the only vendor not to issue a press release.

According to MSI, they did not make noise about this feature because the feature was enabled on the boards since the release of the 30+ LGA1150 mainboard models! Knowing that the feature would be removed when the release of the next CPU microcode, they did not highlight the capability. Apparently Intel has already issued a new microcode which addresses this issue and, obviously, MSI recommends everyone to always have the latest BIOS flashed to ensure best performance, compatibility and stability.

There's an interesting twist to the story as MSI states, and I quote, "It is with great pain that we see other motherboard manufacturers announce this a feature for short-term marketing gain, neglecting to mention that users would use this function in the near future. We want to urge the PC community to only chose Z87 based motherboards if they want to enjoy the benefits of overclocking". I guess everyone's guilty of sometimes choosing the short-term marketing path - no need to point fingers.

In all honesty, I don't think this changes too much. I don't think anyone opted for a non-Z chipset when purchasing a K CPU. What will be interesting is to see what vendors stick with the old microcode and which vendors upgrade and lose the overclocking capability.

MSI, a leading Motherboard and Graphics Card manufacturer has updated the BIOS for its H87, B85 and H81 based motherboards with Intel's latest Microcode update. Since the Initial release of this BIOS, it has allowed CPU overclocking on all MSI motherboards with a H87, B85 or H81 chipsets. MSI, as a technology leader had this feature exposed since the initial release of each of the more than 30 models that were announced back in June, such as the H87-G41 PC Mate and the B85-G43. At this time, it was apparant that, in order to offer the highest stability and compatibility, it was not in the interest of our community to announce a "feature" that we knew would be removed after a microcode update. Intel has since then updated the microcode for their 8 series chipsets and we advise everyone to always use the latest BIOS for their motherboard as this allows them to enjoy the highest level of stability and compatibility. It is with great pain that we see other motherboard manufacturers announce this a feature for short-term marketing gain, neglecting to mention that users would use this function in the near future. We want to urge the PC community to only chose Z87 based motherboards if they want to enjoy the benefits of overclocking since Z87 based motherboards, like the Z87 MPOWER are guaranteed to provide a great overclocking exprience now and in the future, regardless of the use of special BIOS revisions or "features".