Product Showcase

Product Showcase

The MSI motherboard follows a standard ATX form factor (30.5x24.4cm). The motherboard is located in the Gaming high-end / enthusiast range of the Skylake and Kaby Lake desktop processor product stack. With the Z270 XPOWER Gaming Titanium MSI outs a rather expensive product, yet the many features and possibilities might keep you interested. New is a nice M.2. shield, you can actually install three M2 units. There is Mystic LED RGB activity available, but all was kept subtle mostly at the backside of the motherboard though. Next to that great looks and lots of metal shielding pop out. Bext to that the sheer looks with shielding and PCB coating do make this motherboard very special.
  

Check it out first, nice huh ? Included with the motherboard are the regulars including; manuals, driver CDs, SATA cables and a rear IO plate. It also has a couple of new features which we'll talk about in-depth in this review. I should note that you will receive a small PCB called OC dashboard (extrae tweaking functionality) as well as a USB expander unit.
 

• CPU support: Skylake / Kaby lake class Intel Core processors
• Chipset: Intel Z270 Chipset
• 2x Gigabit: Ethernet Intel Gbe I219-V / I211AT
• Storage: 
  • 3 x M.2 Socket connectors (Optane supported)
  • 2 x SATA 6GB/s connectors ASMEDIA 1061
  • 6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors Intel chipset
  • 1 x U2 slot
• Connectivity: 
  • 4x PCI-E 3.0 x16  (single at x16 / dual at x8 / triple at x8 - x0 - x8 - x4 / quad at x8 - x4 - x4 - x4)
  • 3x PCI-E 3.0 x1
• USB 3.0 / 3.1 Gen 1 and Gen 2 all Intel en ASMedia 2142 / 1042 based as well as Type A and C
• 8-channel ALC 1220 Realtek chip

The I/O back panel reveals 3.1/3.0/2.0 ports most gen 2 (10 Gbps) and a few Gen 1 (5Gbps) . The audio unit has special noise reducing capacitors and shielding on top of that Realtek 1220 chip. You will spot two 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet jack, both from Intel. Included is a PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo port, optical SPDIF out port and five gold plated audio jacks. Also a clearCMOS button is present. If you plan to use the integrated IGP of the processor, you can make use of one HDMI or a DisplayPort connector. The rear connectivity back-panel is loaded full nice.
  

Included in the bundle is one interesting looking motherboard and gear like SATA cables, extra connectors and so on. What this motherboard misses however is WIFI, a bit of a miss if you ask me, especially for a motherboard in this price range. 

The board has 4 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots which can be arranged in these slot configurations with graphics cards:

• 1-way mode - x16 / x0 / x0 / x0
• 2-way mode - x8 / x0 / x8 / x0
• 3-way mode - x8 / x0 / x4 / x4
• 4-way mode - x8 / x4 / x4 / x4

These are PCI Express Gen 3.0 configurations, that's plenty for regular graphics card setups up-to 2-way SLI/Crossfire. The motherboard comes with one 8-pin power connector and an additional 4pin header. You'll get four DIMM slots that can be used for up-to 64GB of dual-channel memory up-to even 3800 MHz supported in OC mode. We'll actually test 3867 MHz as we use a new 3866 MHz Trident Z kit from G.Skill which we'll feature in detail in this review.

Back Panel I/O Ports

• 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse port
• 1 x ClearCMOS button
• 1 x HDMI port
• 1 x DisplayPort
• 3 x USB 2.0 Type A
• 2 x LAN RJ45
• 4 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type A
• 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type A
• 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type C
• 5 x OFC auido jacks
• 1 x Optical DPDIF out