MSI X299 Gaming M7 ACK Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts

Price

The MSI X299 Gaming M7 ACK is available now from most major retailers for around £350. That’s far from cheap, but it’s certainly competitive with other boards on the market. It’s a little more than say, the Gigabyte Gaming 3, but it also has more features. It’s still a bargain compared to the flagship boards which often cost North of £500.

Overview

This is one fantastic looking motherboard, there is no doubt about that. In terms of design, it’s by far one of the best looking X299 motherboards on the market right now. It’s not too over the top but still, it makes quite a statement. There’s RGB LED lighting built into the rear I/O shroud, the chipset shroud, and the small guards between the PCIe slots. This is more than enough lighting to give your build some flair, but not so much to be garish. That all black hardware, combined with a few bits of silver coloured Armor hardware really does look fantastic.

Performance

There’s no doubt that this motherboard can deliver blazing performance. The storage and networking options are very competitive and will help you get the best from your high-end hardware. The inclusion of a pair of M.2 drive bays on the motherboard is also very appealing for the enthusiast user who is tired of gaming loading screens.

The CPU performance is spot on too, at least at stock. The CPU did seem to be throttled in a few of the benchmarks while overclocking and I couldn’t work the bug out. I know the board will do it just fine, I think we may have just had a bad day with the hardware, it does happen. As with any launch hardware we get, a BIOS update or two will work out the kinks. Of course, when it came to memory performance, 3DMark, gaming, etc, the scores were spot on. It was only synthetic tests like Cinebench that seemed to be having issues.

Added Value

If you’re building a high-end gaming system, the ACK does have a lot to offer. There’s room for multi-GPU support, which is nice. Of course, you could easily use those PCIe lanes for M.2 PCIe storage too, if you wanted extremely fast loading times on… well, everything. Built-in Wi-Fi is a welcome bonus too, although I do prefer to stick with wired, it’s nice to have the option. Of course, you can even run both for better performance combined. Nahimic 2+ audio is nice too, offering HD audio and awesome sound processing that’s great for movies, music and gaming. Finally, there’s fun stuff like 3D printing support, allowing you to customise the board. However, I doubt many people actually will.

Pros

• Skylake-X Support
• Good range of overclocking features
• Stylish aesthetics
• RGB lighting
• FROZR cooling on M.2 mounts
• Dual M.2 drive mounts built-in
• Armos on PCIe and DDR4 slots
• Excellent gaming performance
• Competitive value compared to other boards on the market

Cons

• Some synthetic benchmarks didn’t run well while overclocked. However, this does seem to be a bug that will be resolved soon enough.

“If you’re looking for a motherboard that delivers big on networking, storage, and multi-GPU support, the Gaming M7 ACK is one of the best looking and feature packed options in its price bracket.”