MSI Z270 Gaming M5

Www.msi.com $200

The MSI Z270 Gaming M5 is, on paper, very similar to the Gaming Pro Carbon, but what a difference a little bit of design makes. It gets just the right balance of muted colors, little extras and that obligatory RGB lighting. Dig a little deeper, and you don’t find much extra for the price difference. A U.2 slot adds extra SSD support, but it’s a very niche feature. You also get a POST readout. You miss out on the raft of extras on more expensive models, such as power and overclocking buttons. You don’t even get labeling for the front panel headers, leaving you to read the manual to know which cable to plug in where.

Otherwise there are few slip ups. The layout is tidy and intuitive and the M.2 shield a nice extra. When it comes to performance the Gaming M5 just pipped the Carbon in its default config, though it consumed slightly more power in the process.

As for overclocking, for some reason I couldn’t push past 4.9GHz, even with quite a bit of extra voltage. It remained rock solid at 4.9GHz at 1.34V, though, and the resulting performance was within one percent of the Carbon.

This is a good board, but it doesn’t excite as much as more expensive ones, nor is it a bargain.