MSI Z170A Gaming M9 ACK review - The review

MSI Z170A Gaming M9  ACK
The Exquisite Z170 platform 

This round we review the MSI Z170A Gaming M9 ACK. The big brother of the M7 comes with extended looks, AC WIFI, a VRM that can be liquid cooled and then a dozen or so other features. It is one of the best looking products if you ask me, dressed for success and with added benefits like USB 3.1, multiple M.2 slots and the fastest DDR4 support the product will impress. 

A motherboard that promises to deliver a high amount of features and provide that Skylake processor the full infrastructure it needs for a kick-ass gaming PC. Dressed to kill and with added benefits like USB 3.1, multiple M.2 slots and the fastest DDR4 support the product will shock and awe. These motherboards can (well, must) be paired with new Skylake-S series processors. We'll quickly dive into the two most important ones. Skylake Core i5 6600K and Core i7 6700K processors for the desktop platform have been released. We test both processors, yet have separate reviews on each of these processors. A new chip, a new package meaning both of them are Socket 1151. The new series Skylake processors are energy efficient, quite powerful and this needs to be paired with a new motherboard series. For you guys that means the Z170 and H170 range. In this review we test the Core i7 6700K. An unlocked Skylake processor that has four cores and a slim 92W TDP, that is lower compared to Haswell with its 95W TDP thanks to the new and smaller 14nm fabrication process. The quad core CPU has 8 MB L3 cache, and an integrated memory controller that supports both DDR4 and DDR3 memory. The Z170 and H170 series motherboards will all be offered with DDR4 though. For the gaming community two processors are the most important; the Core i7 6700K has four CPU cores with Hyper-Threading, 4.0GHz frequency, 4.20GHz maximum Turbo Boost frequency. Then there is the Core i5 6600K with four cores, 3.50GHz frequency and a 3.90GHz maximum Turbo Boost frequency, both are based on the new LGA1151 socket package. Skylake is the code-name used by Intel for the 14nm processor micro-architecture under development and is the successor to the Broadwell architecture. 

So the Z170A Gaming M9 ACK is the expensive one, the 400 EURO costing product from MSI that positions itself in the upper stack of Skylake motherboards. It was designed with great aesthetics, shielding (yes, even a back-plate) and is just loaded with features. Once you open the box a nice matte black PCB with red shielding and heatsink accents will greet you. On further inspection you'll notice the VRM heatinks even have barbs for liquid cooling fittings. Features wise you may expect triple PCI-Express 3.0 ports, an Audio Boost 3 audio solution, the usual quality components and a Killer NIC E2400 gigabit jack and a Killer Wireless 1535 module that offers broad WIFI including AC. You will spot USB 3.1 (both Gen 1 and Gen2) and even two 32 Gbps M.2 slots. In theory you can even place two M.2 SSDs in RAID which you can boost up-to 64 Gbps of bandwidth. But hey, have a peek at what we are reviewing today and then head onwards into the review.