MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium
Silver in colour, gold in price.
It’s difficult not to be direct and quite blunt about the situation at hand when assessing the MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium versus the competition. Suffice to say, we weren’t impressed. For a $469 motherboard — $100 more than the labs winner — and a product meant to be a jewel in MSI’s crown, the X370 XPower simply fails to deliver for enthusiast users.
We tried numerous BIOS revisions to coerce some cooperation out of the unit. We didn’t feel we were asking for much, just that the motherboard would deliver DDR4-2666 like all the competition, bar one. But like the X370-Taichi, the MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium simply didn’t want to run at speeds beyond the default DDR42133. We persevered for the DDR4-2666 goal, buoyed by examples of the unit running DDR4-3200 in other’s test scenarios, but ours didn’t want to play.
After a few BIOS revisions and communication with MSI and AMD, we ultimately had to make the call to run the tests at DDR4-2133 so the board would at least be included in the roundup.
As mentioned in the Ryzen feature preceding this roundup, we intend to continue to explore the Ryzen-AM4 platform. The hope being that further BIOS development and APC labs testing will see the XPower fly high like it clearly has done so for others.
However, until our Hail Mary is answered, we can reflect on the fact the board is well featured, aesthetically intriguing and BIOS development has the potential to awaken the beast.