MSI X370 Xpower Gaming Titanium

Tweakers need only apply

PRICE $ 469 www.msi.com At

the time we sent out our invite to this roundup, we also sent out a similar invite from our sister magazine, PC and Tech Authority. MSI was unfortunately only able to send one board to cover both magazines, and it just happened to be the most expensive of the lot. This fact alone is going to make it hard to recommend. There’s also the fact that this board really doesn’t offer a lot that gamers will find to be must-have features; instead it has a very specific audience in mind.

There’s no denying what a damn sexy piece of work this thing is, with its shiny silver finish helping it stand out from the crowd. But when we take a look at the feature-set that ordinary users require, it comes up rather lacking.

Being an X370-based board it’s got the usual twin full-length PCIe 3.0 x8 lanes, along with a single full-length PCIe 2.0 x4 slot. Snuck in between these are three small x1 PCIe lanes, as well as twin M.2 slots. Only one of these comes with MSI’s ‘M.2 Shield’, a small slab of metal that covers the drive and is meant to stop SSDs from throttling down when they overheat. A single U.2 connector is also included, but it’s not possible to use all three at once.

There are only six SATA 3 6Gbps ports, two fewer than the $239 Asus board. USB connectivity is par for the course, with nine in total on the rear I/O panel. An ASMedia chip delivers two USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports, one of which is Type-C, while the X370 chipset delivers an additional three USB 2.0 and four USB 3.1 Gen ports. There are headers for another handful of USB headers. A single Intel I211AT Ethernet controller provides network connectivity, while the ALC1220 audio codec handles sound. So far, so meh, but it’s the overclocking features that make this board so pricey.

For starters, there’s the usual onboard buttons that make this easy to use in a test-bench environment – power, reset, clear CMOS, flash-back BIOS. There’s also a rotating dial for overclocking noobs, that provides up to five levels of overclocking. Given the R7 1800X’s rather lacklustre overclocking though, we doubt you’ll make it past the first notch without sending the machine into the depths of Blue-screen, infinite-loop reboot hell. Six fan coolers and beefy heating will allow for extra cooling when extracting the most out of your chip. Interestingly MSI claims this board has “100% compatibility” on the website when referring to memory; could have fooled us, as this was one of the boards

this board doesn’t offer a lot that gamers will find to be must-have features

that required memory timing tweaks to operate properly. There’s also high-end power phase design, including a fully digital PWM, a PCB design optimised for overclocking and a slow mode for booting into Windows while the system is teetering on the edge of instability.

Yet for the vast majority of users, these features will go untouched. It’s fantastic if you want to set world records, but a normal user will still be able to hit 4GHz on an R7 1700 using a $160 board instead. As a result we’d suggest leaving this board to the overclocking pros. BENNETT RING