MSI Z170A Gaming M7 review (Page 24)

MSI Z170A Gaming M7 review

Mainboards 328 Page 24 of 24 Published 2015-08-05 13:54 by Hilbert Hagedoorn

Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & conclusion

MSI is offering one of the best performing products out there in the Z170 segment, it lacks a few features though. I do miss AC WIFI and perhaps a second Ethernet jack preferably from Intel to that user can choose either an intel or E2400 NIC, but perhaps I am nitpicking. Other then that the board is extremely feature rich, overclockable and and has terrific looks if red.black is you taste. Intel doesn't make and thus offer any reference motherboards anymore, so it is hard to define a reference processors performance point as the board mother-partners will do everything in their power to tweak out the last bit of performance. And sure, that's not a bad thing but there can be some platform (brand) performance differences. But yeah, the extra perf you see is mostly related to the higher base clocks. That's just the processor side, I mean the Z170 offer it all in terms of features, stability and reliability really, heaps of USB 3.0/3.1 connectors, plenty SATA3 ports, super dual fast M.2. and a lovely audio solution.

The performance is up there and combined with DDR4 memory this processor makes a good step forward. Combined with the series 100 chipset new features are available as well, SATA3, M.2, some manufacturers will even go U2 and Sata Express. Then there's the added benefit of DDR4 memory that not only use less power, the frequency can be so much higher as well, bringing more bandwidth and overall performance to the applications that require fast memory. Combine that with things like nice Gigabit jacks, exemplary audio solutions on the new motherboards and things like USB 3.1. The overall platform experience is what it is all about for Skylake. Performance with kick-ass features.

Storage

Combined with six SATA 6Gbps ports we can hardly complain about anything. Nice are the recent developments on the M.2 interface, pop in a M.2 compatible PCI-E SSD and you'll see your SSD quickly perform in the 700/800 Mb/sec range. Overall your SATA and M.2 connectivity is plentiful and top notch when it comes to performance. Great to see is that the slow has obtained a x4 PCIe interface connection allowing it 32 Gbps of bandwidth to work in. To compare a little, your SATA3 port has 6 Gbps available. So that small form factor SSD solution now is very future proof. Even better is that MSI includes two M.2. slots both at x4. RAID them and you can achieve seriously sexy performance levels with the right M.2. SSDs.

Aesthetics

Taste differ per person, I like how the Gaming series looks with the black and now dark red color schema combined with the nicely designs heatsinks. The M7 is an excellent product to look at. The one thing that slowly bothers me are the two metal plated PCI-Express x16 slots, I know it's there at user request to reinforce the PCI-E slots, but it is a little too shiny for my taste. perhaps a dark shielded version would be the better way to pursue MSI ? The PCH heatsink has red LEDs to create a bit of a HALO effect coming from under the shielding, it makes the motherboard pop out of your chassis. Well visually that is. The PCB is nicely matte dark as it has received a proper coated layer, including the dark connectors, dark capacitors, with the subtle heatsinks this rocks my boat. This is just a nice looking solution for the enthusiast PC gamer.

Performance & tweaking

The overall performance in combo with the MSI 170A Gaming M7 Deluxe motherboard as such I'd rate as "really good" for a quad core Core i7 6700K and good for the Core i5 6600K. Temps remain reasonable at default clock, temperatures when the CPU is overclocked with added voltage definitely seem to be a notch better opposed to Haswell but still can rise fast and hot. Depending at your CPU you can clock these Skylake processors anywhere from 4.6 to 5.0 GHz depending on a bit of luck. At such a high you will need a lot of voltage, 1.45 maybe passing 1.50 volts when you reach the 5 Ghz barrier on your processor.

The bottom line

The MSI Z170A Gaming M7 is going to be a classic in its genre, it probably could have used two more SATA ports (MSI simply used them for the extra M2 slot) but most of all AC WIFI. I do believe that motherboards anno 2015 should all have some sort of WIFI as the internet of things is wireless. Aside from these two slight remarks we have to acknowledge that the board as tested is sweet in aesthetics, sweet in performance and sweet in its overall features. I just have to mention the Game Boost Knob, normally I am not a fan of automated overclocks, but this one worked properly. We tested a Core i5 6600K, placed the know at it's highest position (11) and booted into windows to find out we where running 4700 MHz on the four CPU cores and the memory was boosted to 2667 MHz. Now I am not saying it'll work this easy for all processors out there, but the end-result was impressive. An automated overclock with automated voltages that was stable at an impressive clock frequency, you don't see that often.

Rounding up I think that the MSI Z170A Gaming M7 is a lovely motherboard, great looks and design, terrific USB connectivity, one Killer E2400 Gigabit jack and all the tweaking mania you need. Your DDR4 memory can be easily configured by enabling the XMP 2.0 profile. You will gain excellent features combined with seriously nice performance and very decent energy consumption levels. I have no doubt that some of you can reach 5 GHz on this CPU, the MSI motherboard will certainly allow for this. The overall combination of the MSI Z170A Gaming M7 and a Core i5 6600K or Core i7 6700K looks to be very solid. The MSI Z170A Gaming M7 comes recommended here at Guru3D.com, unfortunately I did not have a price on this mobo at the time of writing though.