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MSI X370 XPOWER Gaming Titanium Ryzen Motherboard Preview

Ryzen is here, and that means we’ve got a huge range of new motherboards hitting the market from all the big brands around the world. Not only has AMD launched their new processors, but they come in the latest AM4 socket, along with a range of new chipsets that bring a great range of features to the AMD portfolio. One thing that’s very interesting is that all AMD Ryzen CPUs are overclocking ready right out of the box, that feature is enabled by the motherboard, giving vendors the choice to create more affordable boards, right up to extreme overclocking models.

Today we’re taking a quick look at one of the flagship boards from MSI, the MSI X370 MPOWER Gaming Titanium, which comes packed full of high-end features that are sure to excite any enthusiast system builder, modder, gamer, and more. Of course, the most immediately noticeable features of this board is the Titanium finish, which also delivers a full gaming I/O and audio cover, heavy plated titanium heatsinks, DDR4 Steel Armor, PCIe Steel Armor, M.2 Shield, and more, it’s easy to see what MSI call this “bulletproof gaming”.

Features

Supports AMD® RYZEN Series processors and 7th Gen A-series / Athlon™ Processors for socket AM4
Supports DDR4-3200+(OC) Memory
DDR4 Boost with Steel Armor: Give your DDR4 memory a performance boost
VR Ready and VR Boost: Best virtual reality game experience without latency, reduces motion sickness
Mystic Light Extension and Mystic Light Sync: Control all LEDs in system with one click by GAMING APP or mobile devices
Turbo M.2 with M.2 Shield. Turbo U.2 with Steel Armor, Lightning USB 3.1 Gen2
Audio Boost 4 with Nahimic 2: Reward your ears with studio grade sound quality for the most immersive gaming experience
GAMING LAN with LAN Protect, powered by Intel® : The best online gaming experience with lowest latency and bandwidth management
BIOS Flashback+: Easy BIOS recovery without the need of a CPU, memory and VGA card
Military Class 5, Guard-Pro: Latest evolution in high quality components for best protection and efficiency
MULTI-GPU: With Steel Armor PCI-E slots. Supports NVIDIA SLI™ & AMD Crossfire™
In-Game Weapons: Game Boost, GAMING Hotkey, X-Boost, Xsplit Gamecaster
EZ Debug LED: Easiest way to troubleshoot
Click BIOS 5: Award-winning BIOS with high resolution scalable font, favorites and search function
GAMING CERTIFIED: 24-hour on and offline game and motherboard testing by eSports players
WHQL certified for Windows 10

The board design is excellent, no doubt about that, and the AM4 socket comes with support for 7th Gen A-series, Athlon, and Ryzen chips, and all future Ryzen chips, as well as any of the upcoming AM4 based APUs, which we expect to feature Vega hardware, so you know the board is future proof, a long-standing selling point for AMD over the years.

Overclocking and performance enhancing features are no slouch here either, with support for DDR4 3200+(OC) memory, DDR4 Boost, VR Boost, Turbo M.2, Turbo U.2, Lightning USB 3.1 Gen2, Audio Boost 4, the list goes on. In simple terms, this board is going to make it as user friendly as possible to simply plug and play your hardware and get the best performance at the touch of a button. However, it’ll still offer all the advanced features for the enthusiast who want to manually overclock and tweak their hardware, which is something we’ll be covering in greater detail in our upcoming review.

Love your lighting effects? With Mysic Light Sync, you can control all of your system lighting directly from the motherboard, either through the desktop Gaming App, or from your mobile device.

“MSI’s Mystic Light Extension pinheader provides an intuitive way to control additional RGB strips and other RGB peripherals added to a system, without needing a separate RGB controller. By simply connecting any 12V RGB LED strip to the 4-pin Mystic Light Extension RGB-strip header gamers can sync colors to any style they choose.”

The board is well connected, with the CPU taking an 8+4 power input, obviously, the main board takes the standard 24-pin, and for those who want to pump some extra juice through the PCie lanes, there’s an additional 6-pin PCIe header in the bottom left that could be useful to those using multiple high-end GPUs and overclocking. All this is backed up by powerful VRM cooling, water cooling support, and a fantastic BIOS that’s built around overclocking and squeezing the most power out of your system with ease.

Connectivity is robust, and cooling support is excellent, as the board comes equipped with 6 4-pin fan headers, storage offers up six SATA ports, and there are two M.2 mounts on offer as well. Around the back, you’ll find a good range of audio connections including optical TosLink out, HDMI, Display Port, Intel Gaming LAN, USB 3.1 Type-C, 3.0, 2.0, and even a PS2 for those who like their trusty old peripherals for gaming/overclocking.

We’ve barely even scratched the surface of this motherboard and the features that it offers, but we’ll be back shortly with an in-depth review. For now, check out our Ryzen 1800X review here, which uses this very motherboard, to see how well the latest CPU performances on MSI hardware!before we come back this week to test all the features on the new X370 XPower Gaming Titanium.

Stay tuned for updates when we come back this week to test all the features on the new MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium in all its glory, which is available right now from most major retailers for £298.99.

Peter Donnell

As a child in my 40's, I spend my day combining my love of music and movies with a life-long passion for gaming, from arcade classics and retro consoles to the latest high-end PC and console games. So it's no wonder I write about tech and test the latest hardware while I enjoy my hobbies!