Msi z170a gaming pro review

MSI, leader in the manufacture of high performance motherboards, graphics cards and laptops, has launched a wide variety of 1151 socket motherboards on the market and has sent us to analyze one of the most interesting for its price / quality ratio. of the precious MSI Z170A Gaming PRO. Don't miss our review!

We thank MSI Spain for trusting the product for its analysis:

Technical characteristics MSI Z170A Gaming PRO

MSI Z170A Gaming PRO

The MSI Z170A Gaming PRO is presented in a robust cardboard box and a category design, nothing to envy to the top of the range plates such as the M5 / M7 series of the brand. Use corporate colors: red and black for all coverage. In the rear area we have all the most important features and improvements of this new generation Z170.

Once we open the box we find a very complete bundle:

MSI Z170A Gaming PRO motherboard. Back plate. Instruction manual and quick guide. CD with drivers. SATA cables. M.2 disk screw.

The MSI Z170A Gaming PRO is an ATX format motherboard with dimensions of 30.5cm x 24.4cm, so we will not have a problem assembling any tower in this format. The colors that predominate in its design is black for the PCB and red details on its heatsinks.

On cooling, it has two robust heatsinks that keep its 8 power phases and the Z170 chipset cool. It incorporates Military Class 5 technology that comes equipped with Titanium Chokes that offer better temperatures and greater dissipation. Also the new Hi-c Cap capacitors that offer 93% energy efficiency and the DARK CAP that offer an Equivalent Series resistance (ESR) at the same time as 10 years of useful life. We leave you an image gallery of when we removed their heatsinks:

It features 4 64 GB compatible DDR4 RAM memory sockets and speeds of up to 3600 Mhz with pre-overclocking and is compatible with the latest generation XMP 2.0 profile. The MSI Z170A Gaming PRO features a USB 3.0 head . internal which allows us to have several ports in our tower at the highest possible speed. In addition to its compatibility with USB 3.1?

Among its expansion connections we find 3 x16 slots with PCI Express 3.0 bus and compatible with technology 3 way CrossFireX from AMD and 2-way SLI from Nvidia. As an extra, it includes three PCI Express x1 connections and a single connection to the classic normal PCI to expand the equipment with various add-on cards.

In this version if it incorporates the interesting M.2 connection. with a bandwidth of 32 GB / s. The MSI Z170A Gaming Pro also allows connection of 4 NVMe Mini-SAS SSD technology with Turbo U.2 host card.

With Audio Boost 3 and the work done by Nahimic Sound Technology, they offer the best sound quality thanks to the use of Premium quality components. This way you get crystal clear quality sound and music through 8-channel HD Audio or high-impedance headphones to master the game.

It incorporates only six 6 GB / s SATA III connections that allow us to carry out RAID 0, 1 and 5 with multiple hard drives. Be careful if we connect an M.2 disk. We will lose two SATA… be very careful with your configuration.

Finally I detail the complete rear connections of the MSI Z170A Gaming PRO:

1 x PS / 2.2 x USB 2.0.1 x DVI. 1 x HDMI. 6 x USB 3.0.1 x Gigabit LAN. Digital audio output.

Test bench and tests

TESTING BENCH
Processor:	Intel i5-6700k.
Base plate:	MSI Z170A Gaming PRO
Memory:	2 × 8 16GB DDR4 @ 3000 MHZ Kingston Savage
Heatsink	Corsair H100i GTX.
HDD	Samsung 840 EVO 250GB.
Graphic card	Nvidia GTX 780.
Power supply	EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G2

To check the stability of the processor and motherboard we have stressed with Prime 95 Custom and air cooling. The graphics that we have used is an Nvidia GTX780, without further delay, let's see the results obtained in our tests with a 1920 x 1080 monitor.

BIOS

The BIOS does not change too much to those already analyzed in the Z170 series, only that this series does not allow us to overclock from the multiplier to our processor, but if it allows us to touch the BLCK to increase the frequency, for this we must have memory with high speed.

WE RECOMMEND YOU, Gigabyte and MSI prepare their X399 boards for the new Threadripper 2

Final words and conclusion

msi has defined one of the best quality / price motherboards for socket 1151 both for its aesthetics and for its excellent Military Class V components. It has a very striking design and great power phases that will help to perform large overclocks.

Regarding performance we have put the flagship of the socket, the i7-6700k with an overclock of 4700 mhz and the results have been excellent.

It is currently in online stores for a price of 155 euros (Amazon) and seeing the price of the motherboards on the market it seems to me one of the best quality / price boards.

ADVANTAGE	DISADVANTAGES
+ MILITARY CLASS V COMPONENTS.	- DOES NOT INCLUDE USB 3.1 TYPE C.
+ EXCELLENT SOUND CARD.	- MAY INCLUDE LAN KILLER.
+ RGB LIGHTING SYSTEM.
+ GOOD PRICE.