MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC

The Gaming Choice

Price $ 275 au.msi.com

If

you’re a gamer and want the best platform you can get with an ITX footprint, then Intel’s Z370 platform and and i7-8700K will unquestionably deliver the best gaming performance. For this system, we chose MSI’s Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC. It’s got all the features you’ll need to maximise your gaming performance and still have some headroom for overclocking up to that magical 5GHz number. It will maximise the output of your GPU and deliver the highest possible frame rates to get the best out today’s high refresh rate gaming monitors.

SMALL FORM FACTOR GAMING WITHOUT COMPROMISE

It’s a well established fact that Intel CPUs give you that little bit extra gaming performance vs. AMD’s Ryzen chips. The differences may be small, or practically non-existent at higher detail levels and resolutions, but it is very apparent at lower resolutions. A competitive gamer needs every frame per second they can get to maximise the effectiveness and experience with a high refresh rate monitor. That’s where the higher turbo clocks and overclocking superiority of Intel CPUs are most apparent. To get the best out of a CPU like the 8700K, you’ll need a quality Z370 motherboard and MSI’s Z370I Gaming Pro Carbon is designed specifically for that purpose.

The Z370 GPC has a great set of features for its price. The VRM is pretty good, with a pair of heatsinks. There’s a PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot, Intel LAN and Wi-Fi, and a good quality audio solution. There’s a bit of RGB onboard too, with an addressable header.

ITX CAN OC TOO

The Z370I GPC is a terrific memory overclocking board. If you’re thinking of going all in with a kit of DDR44000+ memory, there are few better boards capable of running at high speeds. You’ll also be able to push your K-series processor to 5GHZ or even higher. Pair it with a GTX 1080 Ti, for example, and you’ll realistically have the most powerful gaming PC you can get, all in a small form factor footprint. Sah- weet.

The I/O area is well equipped, though a couple of extra USB ports would be welcome. There’s PS/2 and GbE ports, the Wi-Fi antenna ports, and a CMOS clear button. The USB consists of a pair of USB 2.0 ports, another pair of USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports, and then Type-A and Type-C USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports. Finally there’s an S/PDIF optical audio port in addition to the usual analogue audio ports.

It seems there’s a perception that a gaming PC needs to be big, with 10 fans and RGB everywhere. How much empty space is there in a system like that though? A lot. You can get exactly the same performance with an ITX system. Heck, you can even pack gear like this into some truly tiny cases the size of a shoebox. Take an MSI Z370I gaming Pro Carbon, an i7 8700Kn and a GTX 1080 or 1080Tin and you’ll have a system that can perform with the best of them, at a fraction of the size. CHRIS SZEWCZYK

If you’re thinking of going all in with a kit of DDR44000+ memory, there are few better boards...