MSI H81-P33 Board for i5 CPU?

jim_blake

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Mar 3, 2015
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Hi. Can my MSI H81-P33 mobo handle an i5 Haswell CPU with no problems? (Non-K versions like 4460 or 4690)
I'm not gonna overclock the CPU and I'm gonna pair it with an R9 270 for gaming. Currently using an i3-4150. The mobo bios is updated to the latest version (v1.5).
Didn't find any info on H81 mobo tier list. I'd really appreciate any comments and suggestions.
Thank you so much
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Bios is updated to the latest version (v1.5).
 

It says i5-4460 and i5-4690 are supported since bios v1.2. My bios is v1.5. I want to know if my mobo can handle an i5 given its higher power usage (30w more than an i3), and if it's gonna be stable and cool.
 

Well, that's a relief to know. I thought the mobo power-phase count and quality would affect the performance and if I were to use a higher TDP chip (even Non-OC), kinda like a mobo bottleneck, not feeding enough power into the CPU!

So that's not an issue for Intel Non-K processors?
 
We're still talking about a sub 100w chip here. You would probably have to put in an i5-4690k and overclock it before you started to test the limits of that motherboard. It's actually quite a popular budget board for overclocking the pentium g3258 (54w)
 
All has been observed, this motherboard is fine for Haswell i5 and i7 processors. If you don't care about the difference in functionality between the H97 and the H81 chipsets, then this board will do just fine.

The list of processors and required BIOS levels is in the compatibility tab on that page you linked: http://www.msi.com/support/mb/H81P33.html#support-cpu

MSI is one of the 4 top-tier motherboard and component manufacturers. I have at least one somewhere in one of my computers and all my graphics cards happens to be MSI. I can't speak for their tech support quality since I've never needed to contact them. :)