MSI Z170A GAMING M7 (LGA 1151) Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The MSI Z170A Gaming M7 has an MSRP in the UK of £179.99. For launch day, MSI have partnered up with Coolermaster to offer very limited stock of the Nepton 120XL AIO cooler. This is an extremely limited offer and can save you up to £70 if you do not already have an additional a cooling solution; as remember the i5-6600K and i7-6700K are not supplied with stock coolers from release. OverclockersUK currently have the MSI Z170A Gaming M7 on sale for the MSRP of £179.99

Summary

The Gaming M7 is a great board, offering almost everything you could want from a gaming motherboard and more. With the introduction of the Z170 chipset, Intel has enabled even more PCIe lanes with little performance impact to the other PCIe lanes. With this, MSI has included not one, but two M.2 ports with the ability to RAID; we could now start to see an almost all on board computer, so cases could become extremely small without the need for external storage.MSI really bundles in the software with the Gaming series of motherboards. Command Center and the Gaming App are proven to be great software and work extremely well. Something that is unique to MSI is the Nahimic sound software. This works great with stream programs such as XSplit as the sound can be extremely fine tuned.

MSI really bundles in the software with the Gaming series of motherboards. Command Center and Gaming App are proven great apps and work extremely well. Something that is unique to MSI is the Nahimic sound software. This works great with stream programs such as XSplit as the sound can be extremely fine tuned.

One thing that is unique to this board is the Game Boost feature. A small button and twisting knob combination gives the user almost custom overclocking capabilities assuming that your CPU can overclock to those levels. Even though “it goes all the way to 11”, if your CPU can’t reach 5GHz, you can’t turn it to 11. I feel that the physical dial is a massive gimmick for the typical end user because the board will likely be in a closed case away from acceptable reach. Although this would be good for overclockers who use test benches or users with open cases I feel that maybe if it was on an additional device which could be stuck to the desk near you or even a front panel option then it would be much better introduced.

This takes aspects from the GODLIKE motherboard such as the PCIe bracing and I/O cover and thankfully this  cover has been secured even better thanks to additional bolts that go through the PCB. I personally like substantial heatsinks, even if they are completely redundant. I would have loved to have seen more silver incorporated into this with the PCIe shields, or maybe a DIMM channel or even the GAMING M7 logo on the I/O cover itself.

Performance is simply amazing; the 6700k is not only a great update from the 4770k, but also a great alternative from the expensive extreme 5820k. By taking aspects from the X99 series, MSI have enabled ultra high bandwidth pins and lanes to allow the installed hardware to run at their best potential. There was a small issue with the storage devices, however, Z170 is still immature; so driver updates could easily rectify that.

I couldn’t really find any issues with this motherboard, though maybe if I was being extremely picky; I would suggest the DEBUG LED to be moved closer to the buttons, but that’s just me.

Pros

• Excellent performance
• High quality audio
• Feature packed
• Game Boost is a great concept
• Multiple M.2 ports for ultra high-speed storage

Cons

• Premium price
• Red is becoming played out

“The MSI Z170A Gaming M7 offers one of the best Z170 experiences, combining great performance with great looks and an absolutely huge and innovative feature set.”

Thank you to MSI for providing this review sample.