MSI Z170A GAMING M7 Motherboard Review
Today we are very excited to review our first MSI product, the MSI Z170A GAMING M7 motherboard. MSI solution to medium-high oriented enthusiast gamers, an high-level feature packed full ATX board supporting new Skylake processors , fastest DDR-4 RAMs out there, Audio Boost 3 audio, Killer NIC E2400 LAN , USB 3.1 and dual M.2. slots for RAID setup of two M.2. SSDs boosting up-to 64 Gbps of bandwith. All that for just Rs. 24K.
Now let’s see what this MSI Z170 chipset gaming board have for us.
Package
Looking at the front of the box, we see MSI logo with motherboard model no. At the rear of the box, we find that MSI goes into great detail on the specifications of the motherboard.
Inside the box
Looks
Board is a solid build in the great looking black and red colour theme..
Features
Specifications
Layout
Detailed layout of board.
1. Intel LGA 1151 socket, supporting current 6th generation CPU.
2. 4 DIMM Dual channel DDR4 memory slots supporting max. 64GB at 2133MHz in normal and up to 3600MHz +OC.
3. ATX Power connector (24-pin EATXPWR)
4. ATX CPU Power Connector (8-pin ATX12V).
5. Back Panel Connectors
6. 7. 13. 19. 20. 1 x CPU Fan, 1 x CPU OPT Fan and 3 x System Fan Connectors
8. Two front USB 3 Port.
9.2 x SATA Express connectors, 6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors
10. Easy button 3 : On board power, reset, Game Boost , flash and Slow Mode buttons
11. 2 x USB 2.0 Connectors
12. Front panel and debug speaker connector
14. Debug LEDs and TPM Connector
15. Front panel Audio connector.
16. 17. Dual PCIe Gen3 x4 M.2 connector
18. Expansion Slots. 3 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots (support x16, x8/x8, x8/x8/x4 or x8/ x8/x2 modes), 4 x PCIe 3.0 x1 slots
21. Hot Key Switch, enables HOTKEY function to the keyboard connected directly to the HOTKEY port on the rear I/O panel .
Removing Heat-sinks
MSI used dense aluminum heatsink in this board. Heatsinks base is having thermal pad installed.
Today we are very excited to review our first MSI product, the MSI Z170A GAMING M7 motherboard. MSI solution to medium-high oriented enthusiast gamers, an high-level feature packed full ATX board supporting new Skylake processors , fastest DDR-4 RAMs out there, Audio Boost 3 audio, Killer NIC E2400 LAN , USB 3.1 and dual M.2. slots for RAID setup of two M.2. SSDs boosting up-to 64 Gbps of bandwith. All that for just Rs. 24K.
Now let’s see what this MSI Z170 chipset gaming board have for us.
Package
Looking at the front of the box, we see MSI logo with motherboard model no. At the rear of the box, we find that MSI goes into great detail on the specifications of the motherboard.
Inside the box
Looks
Board is a solid build in the great looking black and red colour theme..
Features
- Supports 6th Gen Intel® Core™ / Pentium® / Celeron® processors for LGA 1151 socket
- Supports DDR4-3600+(OC) Memory
- DDR4 Boost: Give your DDR4 memory a performance boost
- USB 3.1 Gen2 2X FASTER: USB 3.1 Gen2 offers performance twice as fast as a regular USB 3.0 connection
- Twin Turbo M.2 64Gb/s + Turbo U.2 ready + USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C + Type-A combo + SATA 6Gb/s
- GAMING LAN with LAN Protect, powered by Killer™: The best online gaming experience with lowest latency
- Audio Boost 3: Reward your ears with studio grade sound quality
- Nahimic Audio Enhancer: Immersive sound quality that pushes the limits of reality
- Game Boost: This one goes up to eleven; 1-seconds of easy overclocking
- GAMING Hotkey: Assign macros, launch your favorite games or do real-time overclocking using a single button
- Designed for overclocking: with OC Essentials and OC Engine 2
- XSplit Gamecaster v2: 1 year free premium license to show off your skills and achievements to the world
- SteelSeries Certified: Optimized for SteelSeries gaming gear
- Military Class 5: The latest evolution in high quality components featuring the brand new Titanium Chokes
- MULTI-GPU with Steel Armor: Steel Armor PCI-E slots. Supports NVIDIA SLI™ & AMD Crossfire™
- Click BIOS 5: Award-winning brand new Click BIOS 5 with high resolution scalable font
- BIOS Flashback+: Easy BIOS recovery without the need of a CPU, memory and VGA card
- GAMING CERTIFIED: 24-hour on- and offline game testing by eSports players for the best gaming experience
Specifications
Layout
Detailed layout of board.
1. Intel LGA 1151 socket, supporting current 6th generation CPU.
2. 4 DIMM Dual channel DDR4 memory slots supporting max. 64GB at 2133MHz in normal and up to 3600MHz +OC.
3. ATX Power connector (24-pin EATXPWR)
4. ATX CPU Power Connector (8-pin ATX12V).
5. Back Panel Connectors
6. 7. 13. 19. 20. 1 x CPU Fan, 1 x CPU OPT Fan and 3 x System Fan Connectors
8. Two front USB 3 Port.
9.2 x SATA Express connectors, 6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors
10. Easy button 3 : On board power, reset, Game Boost , flash and Slow Mode buttons
11. 2 x USB 2.0 Connectors
12. Front panel and debug speaker connector
14. Debug LEDs and TPM Connector
15. Front panel Audio connector.
16. 17. Dual PCIe Gen3 x4 M.2 connector
18. Expansion Slots. 3 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots (support x16, x8/x8, x8/x8/x4 or x8/ x8/x2 modes), 4 x PCIe 3.0 x1 slots
21. Hot Key Switch, enables HOTKEY function to the keyboard connected directly to the HOTKEY port on the rear I/O panel .
Removing Heat-sinks
MSI used dense aluminum heatsink in this board. Heatsinks base is having thermal pad installed.
