Aesthetically speaking this board is what we've all come to expect from MSI, it's clean and a little more "grown up" than previous iterations on the Z97 chipset. Like some other premium Z170 boards this one does include some accent lighting, however here it's all red with no ability to change the color. Fine as far as I'm concerned, green would look tacky and weird with this black and red setup. Which brings me to the one real complaint I have, the Post Code Read Out panel and the Power/Reset buttons on the board have bright green LEDs which completely clash with the look. I've included a picture to illustrate what I mean. Also, I guess if I'm really looking for things to complain about I'd like to see an Intel NIC option included at this price point. The Killer NIC and software suite is fine for some people, but for my needs ends up being more trouble than it's worth. Now, with the bad out of the way let's talk features...
Features wise, this board comes with a lot. Audio is great, I use Superlux HD668Bs and find the board delivering clean audio to the rear, personally I'm not a fan of front side audio in general. Especially with the orientation of my case. But I've found myself being perfectly fine plugging into the motherboard rather than a DAC. There are 2 M.2 slots (supports PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA 6GB/s standards 4.2cm/6cm/8cm lengths), according to the User Guide pp 34-36 will run at x2 speed when PCI devices are installed. However, there doesn't seem to be any effect from the PCIe slots at all, and since there are actually 4 PCI slots you should have no trouble installing something like say an Intel NIC and still having access to the M.2 slots at full speed. This will limit the amount of SATA access you have, but if you need all 6 sata slots, both M.2 slots, and the PCI slots simultaneously, you likely would do better with a Workstation grade board anyway.
Click Bios 5 is slick, but not much different from 4. Clean and easy to use, the overclocking dial "Game Boost" is easy to use. I would still recommend overclocking from software rather than the board itself however. There is a pop up that will show you what settings will be changed with the overclocking presets, a word of caution however these presets DO actually change the base clock. Which is important to keep in mind if you've already overclocking your video card. My system managed a 4.8 on a 6700k, but I dropped it down to a 4.6 due to stability issues with my video OC. Definitely loads of potential here for anyone looking to push their gear.
| Processor | pentium |
|---|---|
| RAM | DDR4 |
| Memory Speed | 2133 MHz |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 3 |
