MSI Z170A Gaming PRO CARBON Review - Product Showcase

The Z170 chipset will bring six Intel chipset based SATA 6 Gb/s storage ports to the motherboard. The board has a M.2. PCI Express slot using x4 lanes (PCI-Express Gen 3.0) as well giving the port a proper 32 GB/sec performance. There are plenty USB 3.0 and 3.1 ports available though internal connectors motherboard connectors. BTW the industry calls USB 3.0 USB 3.1 Gen 1 these days, a little misleading TBH. USB 3.1 Gen 2 would be the new and proper "true" 10 Gbps connectors. You get two of these at the rear IO, one being the smaller type C.

 

The eight phase power design board will get four DIMM slots offer support for dual-channel DDR4 memory up to even 3,600 MHz (OC). If you activate the XMP 2.0 profile in the BIOS, your memory will be automatically configured for you at its maximum clock speed and recommended voltage. You can install a maximum of 64 GB in total. Again, XMP 2.0 must be supported, we'll show you this setup running at 2,133 and 3,200 MHz later on in the article.
 

Overall a pretty decent and clean design really, aesthetically pleasing to the eyes as well. MSI applied their Military Class components on the motherboard with updated DrMOS MosFETs and aluminum colored dark capacitors. MSI offers a Realtek ALC 1150 based multi-channel audio solution on this motherboard, it further enhances on that IC with improved component selection and a nifty software suite. The PCB is very clean looking, we like that.

MSI is applying metal shielding to their primary PCI-Express slots these days. They can handle more weight with heavy graphics cards, and it looks good with a black PCB as well.

The one aesthetic discomfort would be the rear IO connectors on that metal color, that would have looked great in a black finish, eh? Very little on the mobo oozes carbon though, asicde from a carbon like sticker on the heatsinks.