# MSI Z170A GAMING M7 Motherboard Review



## rakesh_sharma23 (Sep 28, 2015)

*MSI Z170A GAMING M7 Motherboard Review*

*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7.jpg


 Today we are very excited to review our first MSI product, the MSI Z170A GAMING M7 motherboard. MSI solution to medium-high oriented enthusiast gamers, an high-level feature packed full ATX board supporting new Skylake processors , fastest DDR-4 RAMs out there,  Audio Boost 3 audio, Killer NIC E2400 LAN , USB 3.1 and  dual M.2. slots for RAID setup of two M.2. SSDs boosting up-to 64 Gbps of bandwith. All that for just Rs. 24K.


*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/00.jpg


Now let’s see what this MSI Z170 chipset gaming board have for us.


*Package*
Looking at the front of the box, we see MSI logo with motherboard model no. At the rear of the box, we find that MSI goes into great detail on the specifications of the motherboard.
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*Inside the box*
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*Looks*
Board is a solid build in the great looking black and red colour theme..
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*Features*


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 Supports 6th Gen Intel® Core™ / Pentium® / Celeron® processors for LGA 1151 socket
Supports DDR4-3600+(OC) Memory
DDR4 Boost: Give your DDR4 memory a performance boost
USB 3.1 Gen2 2X FASTER: USB 3.1 Gen2 offers performance twice as fast as a regular USB 3.0 connection
Twin Turbo M.2 64Gb/s + Turbo U.2 ready + USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C + Type-A combo + SATA 6Gb/s
GAMING LAN with LAN Protect, powered by Killer™: The best online gaming experience with lowest latency
Audio Boost 3: Reward your ears with studio grade sound quality
Nahimic Audio Enhancer: Immersive sound quality that pushes the limits of reality
Game Boost: This one goes up to eleven; 1-seconds of easy overclocking
GAMING Hotkey: Assign macros, launch your favorite games or do real-time overclocking using a single button
Designed for overclocking: with OC Essentials and OC Engine 2
XSplit Gamecaster v2: 1 year free premium license to show off your skills and achievements to the world
SteelSeries Certified: Optimized for SteelSeries gaming gear
Military Class 5: The latest evolution in high quality components featuring the brand new Titanium Chokes
MULTI-GPU with Steel Armor: Steel Armor PCI-E slots. Supports NVIDIA SLI™ & AMD Crossfire™
Click BIOS 5: Award-winning brand new Click BIOS 5 with high resolution scalable font
BIOS Flashback+: Easy BIOS recovery without the need of a CPU, memory and VGA card
GAMING CERTIFIED: 24-hour on- and offline game testing by eSports players for the best gaming experience



*Specifications* 
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*Layout*
Detailed layout of board.
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/23.jpg


1. Intel LGA 1151 socket, supporting current 6th generation CPU.
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/24.jpg


2. 4 DIMM  Dual channel DDR4 memory slots supporting max. 64GB at 2133MHz in normal and up to 3600MHz +OC.
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/25.jpg


3. ATX Power connector (24-pin EATXPWR)
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/26.jpg


4. ATX CPU Power Connector (8-pin ATX12V).
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/27.jpg


5. Back Panel Connectors
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/28.jpg
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6. 7. 13. 19. 20. 1 x CPU Fan, 1 x CPU OPT Fan and 3 x System Fan Connectors
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/30.jpg


8. Two front USB 3 Port.
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/31.jpg


9.2 x SATA Express connectors, 6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/32.jpg


10. Easy button 3 : On board  power, reset, Game Boost , flash and Slow Mode buttons 
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/33.jpg


11. 2 x USB 2.0 Connectors
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/34.jpg


12. Front panel and debug speaker connector
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/35.jpg


14. Debug LEDs and TPM Connector
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/36.jpg


15. Front panel Audio connector.
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/37.jpg


16.  17. Dual PCIe Gen3 x4 M.2 connector


18. Expansion Slots. 3 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots (support x16, x8/x8, x8/x8/x4 or x8/ x8/x2 modes), 4 x PCIe 3.0 x1 slots
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/38.jpg


21. Hot Key Switch, enables HOTKEY function to the keyboard connected directly to the HOTKEY port on the rear I/O panel .
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/39.jpg




*Removing Heat-sinks*
MSI used dense aluminum heatsink in this board. Heatsinks base is having thermal pad installed.
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/40.jpg


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*Component Layout*
Let’s now see what all components MSI have planned for this board.
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/42.jpg


1. 2. CPU voltage regulator circuit has Nikos PK632BA and Nikos PK616BA as the high and low side MOSFETs controlled by Intersil ISL95856 Hybrid Digital PWM Controller.
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3. 2-Phase digital memory power supply section is controlled by Powervation’s PV3205 Digital Dual-Phase Synchronous Buck Controller.
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/46.jpg


4.  Two the NXP Semiconductors PTN3360D HDMI / DVI level shifter.
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/47.jpg


5.  8.ASM1464 USB 3.0 repeater chips
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6.ASmedia ASM1142  USB 3.1 Contoller
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/49.jpg


7.IDT6V41516NLG – (Overclock Engine 2) Clock Generator
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9. Intel Z107 Express Chipset.
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10.  ASMedia ASM1480 PCI-E quick switches to provides all bandwidth to the PCI-E 16x slots.
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/52.jpg


11. NUVOTON NCT6793D – Super I/O Chipset.
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12. MSI uses SPI chip labeled MXIC MX 2SL12873F a capacity of 128 Mb for storing UEFI BIOS.
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/54.jpg




13. Killer Gigabit Ethernet Controller, Killer E2400.
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/55.jpg


14. MSI Audio Boost 3 Audio and Nahimic Sound technology is powered by Realtek ALC1150 chip which is a high-performance multi-channel High Definition Audio Codec that delivers an exceptional audio listening experience with up to 115dB SNR, ensuring users get the best possible audio quality from their PC.
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*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/56.jpg


The ALC1150 provides ten DAC channels that simultaneously support 7.1-channel sound playback, plus 2 channels of independent stereo sound output (multiple streaming) through the front panel stereo outputs. Two stereo ADCs are integrated and can support a microphone array with Acoustic Echo Cancellation (AEC), Beam Forming (BF), and Noise Suppression (NS) technologies. The ALC1150 incorporates Realtek proprietary converter technology to achieve Front differential output 115dB Signal-to-Noise ratio (SNR) playback (DAC) quality and 104dB SNR recording (ADC) quality.
A semi-transparent line on motherboard separates the whole audio section from the rest of the board in order to minimize interference. In addition MSI used two OPA1652 Op-amp for front audio amplification. So licensing under Stereo mode produces high audio quality with excellent dynamic range.
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*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/57.jpg


RightMark Audio Analyzer (RMAA) suite is used for testing MSI High Definition audio against Asus Xonar DX Sound card. You can see clearly the difference between Noise level, dynamic rang and Total harmonic distortion percentage produced by MSI High Definition audio.


RMAA Asus Xonar DX
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/58.jpg


RMAA Audio Boost 3 Audio 
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/59.jpg






*Testing*


 CPU - Intel Core i7 6700K 
 Board -  MSI Z170A-Gaming M7 
 RAM - 2 X 8GB HyperX Fury DDR4 2666Mhz 
 SSD - Kingston SV300 120GB
 Cooler - Corsair H100i GTX 
 GFX - Asus HD7750
 PSU - CM 750
 Display - Acer S220HQL 
 OS - Win 8.1 Pro / Windows 10 

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*Overclocking*
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Memory Overclocking
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/86b.jpg




*Benchmarks* 
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*Power Consumption*
Wattage reading as per displayed by APC Pro 1000VA (Model no. BR1000G-IN) UPS.
*www.pctekindia.com/Reviews/MSIZ170AGAMINGM7/93.jpg


*Pros*


Excellent and easy OC
Multi GFX support
Good audio
 Killer LAN
 Custom Overclocking with Game Boost.



*Cons*


UEFI seem a little cluttered. Almost every setting is displayed in central small area. Like one windowed interface.



*Conclusion*
MSI Z170A GAMING M7 is an excellent overclocking and Gaming motherboard offering lot of gaming oriented feature and great performance with USB 3.1 and dual M.2 ports. One interesting and unique thing we like on this board is the Game Boost feature, a small knob and button combo giving overclockers some great custom overclocking capabilities. I was able to OC my i7-6700k processor up to 4.8GHz and by selecting one of the build-in Memory OC profile in BIOS, I overclocked Kingston HyperX fury DDR-4 2666 RAM to stable 3200MHz very easy. 


At the conclusion I found MSI Z170A GAMING M7 to be a great gaming motherboard, with some unique OC feature, best suitable for gamer and overclockers.




*Manufacturers Info*
Site Link  


Source / More info  


Thanks.


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