Introduction

MSI B360 Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard
Proper value with great aesthetics?

We have one more B360 motherboard up for review, the MSI B360 Gaming Pro Carbon. Again a very price friendly motherboard that can house a fast 6-core Coffee Lake processor. With a full PCIe x16 graphics card slot, full speed M2 SSD capability and six SATA3 ports, these B360 motherboards might become the new mainstream.

MSI designed a B360 motherboard with some pretty terrific looks man, and hey compared to the H370 chipset you'll forfeit another few PCIe lanes and a bit of RGB bling (some is still there though). However, if you do not demand tweaking options, pair it with the new Core i5 8600 (non-K), and you'll have the ability to create a demonic beast of a gaming rig with the right graphics card. With a B360 chipset you get many of the features and functionality from that H370 and Z370 platform, yet scrap the tweaking and overclocking functions. This effectively means that K model processors are not something you should spend your money on as you cannot OC them easily anyway. Any B360 chipset based motherboard, however, offers plenty of features for both internal and external connectivity. For example, you will spot things like a DP & HDMI port, USB 3.1 ports, six SATA3 ports, and even a full speed M.2 slot. There is a Gigabit Ethernet, 8-channel HD audio. 

This MSI B360 Gaming Pro Carbon we'll again pair with a Core i7 8700K, a motherboard positioned in the affordable segment of the MSI line-up. It offers very very decent looks, you can fit an M.2 SSD (with heatsink) and it has been fitted with a GigE Ethernet interface (Intel), you get one reinforced full PCIe x16 slot as well. On the next few pages, I will take you guys a little deeper into the architecture and processor series that is Coffee Lake as well as the B360 chipset, followed by a benchmark session to see how well this motherboard performs and what it has to offer.  

Have a look first, that my friends is what a budget/entry level motherboard looks like in this year and age. The looks are just frickin' awesome!