MSI Z170A MPower Gaming Titanium
How to nail the Z170 chipset
“TWO MOTHERBOARDS in one issue and it isn’t a group test? Are you crazy, MaximumPC? Why do you keep tormenting yourselves like this?” Good question. This month has been particularly interesting for us; we finally garnered a press contact at EVGA for some much-desired review samples, and then, MSI sent us, absolutely totally on purpose, this exceptionally stunning, ballsto-the-wall, silver MSI Z170A MPower Gaming Titanium ATX motherboard. Try saying that five times fast, while drunk.
Poorly angled imagery aside (curse you crazy photographers), this motherboard is beautiful, and that’s down to a couple of nifty additions, most prominent of which is that suitably succulent shiny silver PCB. Until now, we’ve never seen a PCB in silver. Yes, Asus introduced an all-white PCB in the form of the Sabertooth Sabranco, way back with the Z97 chipset in 2014. But an all-silver one? Well, that brings all sorts of complex challenges, certainly from a manufacturing standpoint. Couple that with an extensive aluminum rear I/O cover and a solid backplate, and you’re looking at one standout product. A little niche, though, right? Absolutely. After all, there’s a very limited number of themes this would work with, especially from a color perspective. Silver hardware is limited, and build schemes that come to mind are few and far between. Perhaps a black and silver water-cooled loop might fit the bill, with two Gigabyte GTX 1080s, and some swanky mirrored EKWB backplates? Owf—a boy can dream.
Alas, aesthetics are only half the story. What about connectivity and features? Well, for a $250 motherboard, you’re completely spoilt. For your well-earned cash, you net yourself access to two (steelreinforced) x4 M.2 slots, supporting both RAID 0 and 1; three (steel-reinforced) PCIe slots, running at max in x8x8x8; four dualchannel DDR4 (steel-reinforced) DIMM slots for all your crazy memory speeds, all the way up to and beyond 3,866MT/s; and, somewhat more interestingly, a single U.2 connector located below the SATA ports (not steel-reinforced), for all those Intel PCIe SSDs you’re not buying yet. Why the steel? In short, it does two things: firstly, it strengthens the PCIe brackets, preventing you from causing too much damage to your, err, slots. And secondly, it reduces
the potential amount of electromagnetic interference from your other components. Also, it just happens to be silver-colored, so it matches the board. FIGURES OF FUN As far as performance goes, it’s as well rounded as we’ve come to expect. Processor performance was in line, clocking up 922 points in Cinebench R15 at stock, and 19.39fps in Tech ARP’s x264 benchmark—about right for the Intel Core i7-6700K. Memory bandwidth was impressive, scoring just over 30.36GB/s in SiSoftSandra’s benchmarks, and the MPower absolutely stomped over the latency tests in AIDA64, scoring an astonishing 53.7ns—far lower than any of the other X99 motherboards or competing brands. As always, gaming was consistent with every other motherboard ever, scoring the usual 42 frames per second in FarCry Primal, and a nifty 9,478 points in 3DMark Fire Strike.
What was really impressive, though, was the MPower Titanium’s overclocking performance. We dialed our 4.8GHz overclock into the BIOS at 1.4V, and then worked backward to see what minimum voltage the MPower could manage before giving up the ghost in stability. The result? 1.38V. That’s 0.02V lower than we’ve seen from the likes of the MSI Z170A Gaming M7, which also reduced overall temperatures by 7 C. Sweet as.
Without a doubt, the MPower Titanium has a fantastically rich feature set, and exceptional overclocking performance, stability, and performance, bringing it in line with all the other motherboards we’ve ever tested, outside of overclocking. It also looks exceptional, the almost-ubiquitous reinforcement makes it beautifully comfortable to hold, and the added benefit of both U.2 and front USB Type C makes this motherboard a shoo-in for futureproofing your build. MSI’s BIOS still needs a little reworking in our eyes, just to make it a bit easier to use, but otherwise this is a fantastic motherboard, and once you’ve plowed through the marketing rhetoric, it’s well worth your time. MSI Z170A MPower Gaming Titanium
ARGENTUM Outstanding overclocking performance; exceptional latency; sturdy; consistent performance.
GLITTER GRAY Color co-ordinated builds are difficult.
$250, www.us.msi.com