Msi z370 gaming pro carbon review in Spanish (full analysis)

MSI Z370 Gaming PRO Carbon technical features

Unboxing and design

The MSI Z370 Gaming PRO Carbon It comes with the characteristic packaging of the manufacturer's gaming series motherboards, a box with a very colorful design dominated by the brand's corporate colors, red and black. The manufacturer has taken advantage of the box to highlight the most striking features such as its RGB LED lighting system and compatibility with the new eighth-generation Intel Core processors.

On the back they indicate all the most important technical characteristics of the motherboard in several languages including Spanish.

Once we open the box we find the following bundle:

MSI Z370 Gaming PRO Carbon motherboard . SATA cable set, rear hood, SLI bridge, instruction manual and quick guide, CD with software, stickers to identify all wiring.

MSI Z370 Gaming PRO Carbon is a motherboard with a traditional ATX form factor for maximum compatibility without having to give up anything, it is built with dimensions of 30.5 cm x 24.4 cm so there will be no problems to install it in any ATX semi-tower.

The board mounts an LGA 1151 socket to give compatibility to the new Intel Coffee Lake processors, it is the same socket used by the Kaby Lake and Skylake although these are not compatible. The reason for this is that Coffee Lake is powered by the new Z370 chipset which is not compatible with previous generations of processors for the LGA 1151 socket.

Rear view of the motherboard, for the most curious.

The MSI Z370 Gaming PRO Carbon features a 10-phase power VRM, this system is of the highest quality and has Military Class V components that guarantee the best reliability and great energy efficiency. Basically it incorporates improved components that allow us to perform a better overclock, greater stability and, above all, durability. This power supply takes power through a 24-pin ATX connector and an 8-pin EPS connector, ensuring high power and electrical stability.

The VRM system is cooled by a large aluminum heatsink, we also find a second heatsink located in the chipset, both have the RGB MSI Mystic Light lighting system that is highly customizable and is managed in a very comfortable way using the company's software. This will allow you to give your team a more attractive aesthetic, something especially important if you have a tower with a window.

The MSI Z370 Gaming PRO Carbon incorporates a total of 4 DDR4 DIMM slots attached to the processor and that allow mounting a maximum of 64 GB of DDR4 memory at a native maximum speed of 2666 MHz and in Dual Channel to be able to take full advantage of the processor, It is also compatible with the XMP 2.0 profile to perform overclocking in a very simple way.

We arrived at the graphic subsystem of the MSI Z370 Gaming PRO Carbon and we found two PCI Express 3.0 slots at x16 and a third with x4 electrical operation. The first two have an advanced steel reinforcement to be able to easily support the high weight of the largest and most powerful graphics cards on the market, in this way we will have no problems when installing several very high-end cards. The motherboard offers compatibility with Nvidia and AMD SLI and CrossFireX technologies respectively.

As for the storage options, it incorporates two M.2 connections to install any SSD with type 2242/2260/2280/22110 format (42/60/80 and 110 mm). These devices are very fast thanks to the use of the protocol and have a bandwidth speed of up to 32 Gb / s. What does this mean? A very high speed when transferring large amounts of data and a very fast loading of different programs and the operating system.

One of the drawbacks of M.2 drives is that they generate too much heat at full power, on many occasions we have seen these pickups at more than 70 degrees. For this reason, the new revision of the MSI Shield M.2 heatsink has been included, which allows the temperature to be lowered by up to 40%. This has been slightly modified in thickness to improve its performance. It looks good!

It also includes six more traditional SATA III 6Gb / s ports for mechanical drives and SSDs in a 2.5-inch format. The MSI Z370 Gaming PRO Carbon offers us great storage possibilities as we have seen.

The Realtek ALC1220 integrated sound card comes enhanced with Audio Boost 4 technology. What improvements does it offer us? Better sound quality through the use of premium quality audio components with 8 channels. Which will make us enjoy a more crystalline sound and with a high impedance headphone amplifier.

Finally we detail the rear connections of the MSI Z370 Gaming PRO Carbon. They are made up of:

1 x PS2.8 x USB 3.0.1 x DVI. 1 x USB 3.1 Type A.1 X USB 3.1 Type C.1 x Gigabit LAN. 8 channel sound output.

Test bench and tests

TESTING BENCH
Processor:	Intel Core i7-8700K
Base plate:	MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon
Memory:	64 GB Corsair LPX DDR4 3600 MHz
Heatsink	Corsair H115
HDD	Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB.
Graphic card	Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti.
Power supply	Corsair AX860i.

To check the stability of the Intel Core i7-8700K processor at stock speeds, 3200 MHz memories, the motherboard we have stressed with Prime 95 Custom and we have used a Corsair H100i V2 cooling.

The graphic we have used is an Nvidia GTX1080 Ti, without further delay, let's see the results obtained in our tests with a 1920 x 1080 monitor. We show you the results we have obtained:

BIOS

The BIOS of the MSI Z370 Gaming PRO Carbon is very complete and allows us to make any modification to our system. From adjusting the processor clock frequency, changing memory speeds, improving your chassis temperatures with a custom fan curve, or quickly updating to the latest BIOS under download. Excellent work!

Final words and conclusion about MSI Z370 Gaming PRO Carbon

The MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon was born exclusively for Intel's 8th generation processors. After several days of testing it is one of the best quality / price motherboards for this LGA 1151 platform.

Among its benefits we find some excellent components: 10 power phases, Japanese capacitors and palpable improvements in the sound card. It is also important to know that PCI Express slots and the transmission of data in RAM are reinforced.

Z370 motherboards are not compatible with Kaby Lake processors, only with Intel Coffe Lake.

In our tests we have been able to overclock both the i5-8600k and i7-8700k up to 4.7 GHz without much effort. We have not found any news about the temperatures of the feeding phases, and that is that unlike the X299 platform.. They are super cool!

We really liked that it incorporates an Intel-signed 802.11 AC wireless connection, sound enhanced with Audio Boost technology (top-quality DAC for headphones). We cannot forget the new MSI Shield M.2 revision that allows us to cool our NVMe SSDs efficiently and without losing performance (throttling).

From today we will find it in online stores for a price of 210 euros. Undoubtedly, a high-end motherboard for a price affordable to many users. Did you like the MSI Z370 Gaming PRO Carbon as much as we do? We want to know your opinion!

ADVANTAGE	DISADVANTAGES
+ DESIGN SIMILAR TO THAT OF THE Z270 SERIES, WHICH IS PERFECT	- NONE
+ MILITARY COMPONENTS
+ NICE RGB LIGHTING
+ OVERCLOCK CAPACITY
+ INCORPORATE WIFI CUSTOMER

The Professional Review team awards you the gold medal and recommended product:

MSI Z370 Gaming PRO Carbon

COMPONENTS - 90%

REFRIGERATION - 82%

BIOS - 85%

EXTRAS - 80%

PRICE - 80%

83%

The MSI Z370 Gaming PRO Carbon motherboard can be quickly defined with the three B's: "Good, pretty, and cheap." An ideal option to equip it with a six-core processor and get the most out of it while playing.