MSI B360M Mortar Micro-ATX Motherboard Review

A Closer Look

A more affordable model doesn’t have to look “cheaper” and this one certainly doesn’t. The chipset may have changed, but MSI still puts all their effort into creating a great looking motherboard. It features a black PCB, with grey and silver detailing that’s sure to look smart in any system build.

There are two large heatsinks on the motherboard, ensuring that your CPU can run at its best 24/7. It may not overclock, but it’ll still have to deal with high frequencies and power delivery on some of the faster 8th Gen processors. Plus those decals combined with the silver finish mean those heat sinks look gorgeous too.

DDR4

The motherboard features four DIMM slots, with support for DDR4 2666+ memory. Aside from that, you’ll find a few fan headers up here, as well as a front panel USB 3.1 header.

There are only four SATA ports on this motherboard, not a lot, but enough for this chipset and mATX builds.

There’s a single PCIe 16x slot with armour, which should handle any heavy duty GPU and its cooler. There’s another full-size slot, but it’s only 8x, and two 1x slots in between also.

VNMe and Optane Support

If you’re feeling left out with just four SATA ports, don’t worry, as there are two M.2 mounts here also!

There’s a trace on the motherboard, separating the audio hardware to reduce noise. Here you’ll find eight dedicated gold-plated caps for the audio hardware, which is great to see and hear.

Rear I/O

Finally, the rear I/O, and MSI didn’t skimp here at all. There are three display outputs, with DVI, HDMI, and DP are taken care of. There are five full-size USB ports, as well as a dedicated Type-C, so connectivity should be good. However, it’s the first B360 board I’ve seen that still has an optical output, as well as gold-plated