discussion MSI Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon Motherboard Review

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Feature Testing: Mystic Light

Feature Testing: Mystic Light

Love it or hate it, RGB LED lighting is without question the big new marketing push among motherboard manufacturers. While the idea is simple enough, each manufacturer has had a different approach to implementing this feature, with varying lighting zones and obviously different control software too. MSI is no stranger to this feature, since they unveiled the very first RGB-lit motherboard back in 2015, the modestly-named X99A Godlike Gaming. Dubbed “Mystic Light”, this RGB LED lighting has been carried forward to this latest generation, though with significant enhancements.

For starters, the Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon has a lot of lighting zones. There are RGB LEDs under the PCH heatsink, under the audio isolation line, under the rear I/O shroud, and uniquely positioned on nearly half of the the right-hand side of the motherboard. There are even LEDs integrated into the LAN port and the two USB ports under it. As you will see below, the overall effect can be pretty striking if you make good use of the utility below:

The LED utility is obviously the piece of software in charge of controlling the Mystic Light RGB LED lighting feature. Whether you like LED lighting or not, you will need to install this piece of software (which is integrated into the Gaming App) since there is no LED settings in the UEFI. If you want to disable this feature, it is as simple as clicking the icon in the top-right corner.

If you don’t want to disable them, that is good news since they are enabled by default. Using the LED utility you can adjust the lights to any one of 16.8 million colours and customize them with your choice of cool lighting effects, such as breathing, flashing, double flashing, marquee, meteor, stack, rainbow, lightning, and random. They can also dance to your music, but not to the actual beat, instead you need to select the type of music you are playing (pop, rap, jazz, play, movie). The rudimentary MB Function LEDs - of which there are five - only have four of these effects and don't respond to music. We wish that this software - or perhaps the whole Mystic Light implementation - was a little more 'intelligent', with actual music beat detection and other real-time effects like reacting to CPU temperature, etc.

Since every lighting area is independently controlled, when you make changes you must click apply to save before moving on to the next area, which is a little annoying. We wish there was a way to control and coordinate all the lighting areas with one selection.

Click on image to enlarge​

With bright LEDs, cool designs that allow the light to shine through, and great placement, Mystic Light does its job very well. When it comes to visual impact, this MSI model comes second only to the AORUS Z270X Gaming 5, which still has the best RGB LED implementation of any motherboard that we have tested.

As you can see, however they have done it, there really is a fair amount of light emanating from the LAN and USB ports. It’s a cool touch, but one that few people will likely get to appreciate given its location at the rear of the case. The last picture is of the MB Function LEDs, which are essentially just visual aids that show you that a slot is occupied. There are five such lights in total, one next to each bank of memory slots, as well as one below the retention clip of each PCI-E x16 slot. Regrettably, they are not RGB LEDs, they just simple red lights, so they may clash with your desired aesthetic. Thankfully, as with every lighting zone on this motherboard, they can be independently disabled.

Overall, MSI have done some great work with this model. The wide variety of lighting zones and the combination of endless colours and cool effects will open many possibilities for those who want to add some pizzazz to their system. Here is a little live action look at the lighting effects:

<iframe width="700" height="394" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vuxC2-oXHa0?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>​

 

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Feature Testing: Onboard Audio

Feature Testing: Onboard Audio

Since fewer and fewer consumers seem to be buying discrete sound cards, the quality of a motherboard's onboard audio is now more important than ever. As such, we figured that it was worthwhile to take a closer look at just how good the analog signal quality is coming out of the onboard Audio Boost 4 audio subsystem that is implemented on the Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon. As mentioned earlier, this model features the brand new Realtek ALC1220 codec, Texas Instruments OP1652 op-amp, Chemicon audio capacitors, and a PCB-level isolation line.

Since isolated results don't really mean much, but we have also included some numbers from the plethora of motherboards that we have previously reviewed. All of the Z170 models feature onboard audio solutions that are built around the Realtek ALC1150 codec, while the Z270 motherboards all feature the newer Realtek ALC1220 codec. While they may all have similar codecs, there are vastly different hardware implementations that feature different op-amps, headphone amplifiers, filtering capacitors, secondary components and layouts.

We are going to do this using both quantitative and qualitative analysis, since sound quality isn't really something that can be adequately explained with only numbers. To do the quantitative portion, we have turned to RightMark Audio Analyzer (RMAA), which the standard application for this type of testing.

Since all modern motherboards support very high quality 24-bit, 192kHz audio playback we selected that as the sample mode option. Basically, what this test does is pipe the audio signal from the front-channel output to the line-in input via a 3.5mm male to 3.5mm male mini-plug cable, and then RightMark Audio Analyzer (RMAA) does the audio analysis. Obviously we disabled all software enhancements since they interfere with the pure technical performance that we are trying to benchmark.

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While the Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon achieved fairly good numbers, similar to the ASRock Z270 Gaming K6 in most respects, it is still near the bottom of the pack when you compare it to the other Z270 and even Z170 motherboards that we have reviewed. What this mean to most people? Very little. Qualitatively speaking the audio quality was perfectly fine when we listened to a variety of music and spoken word content using a mix of Grado SR225i and Koss PortaPro headphones, Westone UM1 IEMs, and Logitech Z-5500 5.1 speakers. As we tend to repeat, we aren't experts in this area, but we know what we like and know what wee don’t like, and we suspect that your average user will be perfectly satisfied with this motherboard's onboard audio capabilities.

 

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Feature Testing: M.2 PCI-E 3.0 x4

Feature Testing: M.2 PCI-E 3.0 x4

One of the big advancements of the Skylake/Z170 LGA1151 platform was the fact that it brought the M.2 slot to the mainstream. Not only did it make this new storage connector available at a more reasonable price, but it was now properly implemented too. While most first-gen X99 LGA2011-v3 motherboards had an M.2 connector, many were speed limited or had a caveats list a mile long. All Z170 motherboard boasted about their "full speed" PCI-E 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, and in our reviews those claims generally held up. With this new Z270 launch we expected similar performance levels from the M.2 slots, and that is what we are here to find out. While there still isn’t an M.2 SSD that can make full use of this interface's theoretical maximum bandwidth of 32Gbps (4GB/s), we settled on one that could crack the 2000MB/s barrier: the Samsung SSD 950 PRO 256GB.

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Despite now being usurped by the SSD 960 PRO, this high performance NVMe PCI-E SSD combines Samsung's awesome UBX controller with its industry-leading 3D V-NAND and is capable of sequential read speeds of up to 2,200MB/second and write speeds of up to 900MB/sec.

One of the ways that we will be evaluating the performance of a motherboard's M.2 interface is by verifying that is capable of matching or exceeding these listed transfer rates. The other is by checking to see whether it performs as well as when we install the SSD 950 PRO onto a ASUS Hyper M.2 x4 expansion card plugged directly into a PCI-E 3.0 x16 slot. The PCI-E lanes that the M.2 slot requires can come from either the processor or more usually the Z270 PCH, and we are interested to see how well that lane splitting was implemented and whether it is causing any performance issues.

One of the coolest aspects of Z270 motherboards is the fact that they features two M.2 connectors, which can mean less cable management issues if you decide to ditch wired storage. Although you can RAID the two together, we aren't going to be able to test that out since we don't have another SSD 950 PRO laying around. Nevertheless, we are interested in determining whether there is a performance difference between both connectors.

M.2 top vs M.2 bottom vs PCI-E​

As can see, the performance of the two M.2 slots on the Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon was excellent. They both performed nearly identically with each other, and they came within less than 1% of the performance of the PCI-E slot adapter.

While transfer rates are obviously an important metric, we figured that it was also worthwhile to take a peak at instructions per second (IOPS) to ensure that there wasn't any variance there either:

M.2 top vs M.2 bottom vs PCI-E​

Once again, the differences are essentially non-existent and well within the margin of error for this benchmark. As a result, it is clear that the M.2 interface on the Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon has been very well implemented and should ensure that you get optimal performance from any current or future M.2 x4 solid state drives.

 

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Auto & Manual Overclocking Results

Auto & Manual Overclocking Results

It wouldn't be an HWC review if we didn't include some overclocking results, so we thoroughly tested this motherboard's capabilities, especially its auto-overclocking functionality. There won't be any ground breaking insights on how to overclock Kaby Lake - since it's just Skylake Plus - but our personal pointers are to increase the vCore up to around 1.35V if you're cooling can handle it, while increasing the VCCIO up to 1.20V, and the System Agent voltage up to 1.25V if you plan on increasing the cache or memory frequency. If you are trying to achieve the highest possible DDR4 memory speeds, increasing the VCCIO to 1.25V and vSA to 1.35V might be worth trying out. These last two are really only needed if you plan on seriously pushing the Uncore/cache frequency or the memory frequency. On the memory front, we are sticking with (up to) 1.40V in order to alleviate any possible bottlenecks and to stay inline with all our previous DDR4 reviews. By the way, if you have an unlocked K-series processor, there's no reason to go crazy increasing the BCLK if you can achieve similar results by just tweaking the various multipliers instead.

Auto Overclocking

Click on image to enlarge​

On this model, MSI’s automatic overclocking feature revolves around the easy-to-use one-click Game Boost feature, which can be enabled in the UEFI or in Windows. It only takes about a few seconds to overclock the system, but it is quite conservative since it is based on a preset. Basically, as soon as you click on the Game Boost button in the top-left corner of the UEFI, and then save and exit, the system reboots and your automatic overclock is set. Conversely, you can also open the Command Center app, head over to the Game Boost tab, and then click on the On button. After that, a simple reboot locks in the overclock.

Our thoughts on Game Boost (formerly OC Genie) have been relatively consistent over the last few generations; offering only one automatic overclocking option with no settings might make it easy to use, but it is limiting for those users who want a bit more flexibility without actually delving into fully-fledged manual overclocking.

Click on image to enlarge​

As you can see, Game Boost did a commendable job of automatically overclocking our Core i7-7700K. It pushed our chip up to 4.80GHz at 1.304V and also surprisingly boost the memory to DDR4-3200. This latter part was impressive since so few other automatic overclocking features ever touch the memory frequency, which we think is pretty shameful at this point. Yes, the memory timings were very loose, but that’s just the default timings of our G.Skill DDR4-3866 16GB memory kit.

We do have to mention that the 4.80GHz clock speed was not static, the processor would downclock to 4.40GHz at 1.312V in certain heavily threaded workloads. In doing so, the performance level would actually drop to below that of the default spec since our i7-7700K will often natively run at its full 4.50GHz even when all the cores are loaded. It was hard to pinpoint when and why the downclocking would occur since it happened routinely in wPrime but not Cinebench, despite the fact that both apps can max out the all the cores. Either way, since few real-life applications or games ever actually require eight threads, and even fewer ever max out all the cores, Game Boost feature will still provide a heathy performance increase in most scenarios.

Manual Overclocking

Click on image to enlarge​

The Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon had no problems hitting our manual overclocking target of 5.0GHz at 1.35V. While our Core i7-7700K can reach up to 5.1GHz, the amount of extra voltage required to do so makes it an unattractive proposition due to the increased heat output. As on every other Z270 motherboard, we settled on 4.6GHz for the cache, which is 400MHz above the default. This came in handy when it came to extracting the most possible bandwidth from our G.Skill Trident Z F4-3866C18D-16GTZ memory kit. This motherboard was indeed able to apply this memory kit's DDR4-3866 XMP profile, but we were a little shocked at the amount of voltage that it applied: 1.424V for the System Agent, 1.424V for the I/O, and 1.376V for the RAM. While the RAM voltage is closed enough to what it should be (1.35V), the other two are way off the charts. We aren’t comfortable using more than 1.35V with either of two voltages, particularly since it really isn’t required to hit a ‘mere’ DDR4-3866. Clearly, MSI are trying to ensure that even the processors with the weakest memory controllers will be able to achieve respectable memory clocks, but they still shouldn’t have chosen voltages that high.

When it came time to do some real memory overclocking, we simply hit a wall. Anything much over DDR4-3866 kept causing Windows errors, which is something that we hate to see since it is one step away from a corrupted installation. We tried swapping in our Corsair DDR4-4000 memory kit, we couldn't even get that stable at DDR4-3866. Clearly, MSI have a bit of work to do when it comes to optimizing their UEFI for very high memory speeds.

 

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System Benchmarks

System Benchmarks

In the System and Gaming Benchmarks sections, we reveal the results from a number of benchmarks run with the Core i7-7700K and Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon at default clocks, with the three best automatic overclocks, and using own our manual overclock. This will illustrate how much performance can be achieved with this motherboard in stock and overclocked form. For a thorough comparison of the Core i7-7700K versus a number of different CPUs have a look at our "Intel Kaby Lake i7-7700K & i5-7600K Review" article.

SuperPi Mod v1.9 WP

When running the SuperPI 32MB benchmark, we are calculating Pi to 32 million digits and timing the process. Obviously more CPU power helps in this intense calculation, but the memory sub-system also plays an important role, as does the operating system. We are running one instance of SuperPi Mod v1.9 WP. This is therefore a single-thread workload.

wPRIME 2.10

wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton's method for estimating functions, with f(x)=x2-k, where k is the number we're sqrting, until Sgn(f(x)/f'(x)) does not equal that of the previous iteration, starting with an estimation of k/2. It then uses an iterative calling of the estimation method a set amount of times to increase the accuracy of the results. It then confirms that n(k)2=k to ensure the calculation was correct. It repeats this for all numbers from 1 to the requested maximum. This is a highly multi-threaded workload.

Cinebench R15

Cinebench R15 64-bit
Test1: CPU Image Render
Comparison: Generated Score

The latest benchmark from MAXON, Cinebench R15 makes use of all your system's processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene using various different algorithms to stress all available processor cores. The test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects containing more than 300,000 total polygons and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights and shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. This particular benchmarking can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. The result is given in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.

WinRAR x64

WinRAR x64 5.40
Test: Built-in benchmark, processing 1000MB of data.
Comparison: Time to Finish

One of the most popular file archival and compression utilities, WinRAR's built-in benchmark is a great way of measuring a processor's compression and decompression performance. Since it is a memory bandwidth intensive workload it is also useful in evaluating the efficiency of a system's memory subsystem.

FAHBench

FAHBench 1.2.0
Test: OpenCL on CPU
Comparison: Generated Score

FAHBench is the official Folding@home benchmark that measures the compute performance of CPUs and GPUs. It can test both OpenCL and CUDA code, using either single or double precision, and implicit or explicit modeling. The single precision implicit model most closely relates to current folding performance.

HEVC Decode Benchmark v1.61

HEVC Decode Benchmark (Cobra) v1.61
Test: Frame rates at various resolution, focusing on the top quality 25Mbps bitrate results.
Comparison: FPS (Frames per Second)

The HEVC Decode Benchmark measures a system's HEVC video decoding performance at various bitrates and resolutions. HEVC, also known as H.265, is the successor to the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding) standard and it is very computationally intensive if not hardware accelerated. This decode test is done entirely on the CPU.

LuxMark v3.1

Test: OpenCL CPU Mode benchmark of the LuxBall HDR scene.
Comparison: Generated Score

LuxMark is a OpenCL benchmarking tool that utilizes the LuxRender 3D rendering engine. Since it OpenCL based, this benchmark can be used to test OpenCL rendering performance on both CPUs and GPUs, and it can put a significant load on the system due to its highly parallelized code.

PCMark 8

PCMark 8 is the latest iteration of Futuremark’s system benchmark franchise. It generates an overall score based upon system performance with all components being stressed in one way or another. The result is posted as a generalized score. In this case, we tested with both the standard Conventional benchmark and the Accelerated benchmark, which automatically chooses the optimal device on which to perform OpenCL acceleration.

AIDA64 Memory Benchmark

AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a diagnostic and benchmarking software suite for home users that provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives.

The benchmarks used in this review are the memory bandwidth and latency benchmarks. Memory bandwidth benchmarks (Memory Read, Memory Write, Memory Copy) measure the maximum achievable memory data transfer bandwidth. The code behind these benchmark methods are written in Assembly and they are extremely optimized for every popular AMD, Intel and VIA processor core variants by utilizing the appropriate x86/x64, x87, MMX, MMX+, 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2, SSE4.1, AVX, and AVX2 instruction set extension.
The Memory Latency benchmark measures the typical delay when the CPU reads data from system memory. Memory latency time means the penalty measured from the issuing of the read command until the data arrives to the integer registers of the CPU.

 

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Gaming Benchmarks

Gaming Benchmarks

Futuremark 3DMark (2013)

3DMark v1.1.0
Graphic Settings: Fire Strike Preset
Rendered Resolution: 1920x1080
Test: Specific Physics Score and Full Run 3DMarks
Comparison: Generated Score


3DMark is the brand new cross-platform benchmark from the gurus over at Futuremark. Designed to test a full range of hardware from smartphones to high-end PCs, it includes three tests for DirectX 9, DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 hardware, and allows users to compare 3DMark scores with other Windows, Android and iOS devices. Most important to us is the new Fire Strike preset, a DirectX 11 showcase that tests tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Like every new 3DMark version, this test is extremely GPU-bound, but it does contain a heavy physics test that can show off the potential of modern multi-core processors.

Futuremark 3DMark 11

3DMark 11 v1.0.5
Graphic Settings: Extreme Preset
Resolution: 1920x1080
Test: Specific Physics Score and Full Run 3DMarks
Comparison: Generated Score


3DMark 11 is Futuremark's very latest benchmark, designed to tests all of the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. At the moment, it is lot more GPU-bound than past versions are now, but it does contain a terrific physics test which really taxes modern multi-core processors.

Futuremark 3DMark Vantage

3DMark Vantage v1.1.2
Graphic Settings: Performance Preset
Resolution: 1280x1024

Test: Specific CPU Score and Full Run 3DMarks
Comparison: Generated Score

3DMark Vantage is the follow-up to the highly successful 3DMark06. It uses DirectX 10 exclusively so if you are running Windows XP, you can forget about this benchmark. Along with being a very capable graphics card testing application, it also has very heavily multi-threaded CPU tests, such Physics Simulation and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which makes it a good all-around gaming benchmark.

Valve Particle Simulation Benchmark

Valve Particle Simulation Benchmark
Resolution: 1920x1080
Anti-Aliasing: 4X
Anisotropic Filtering: 8X
Graphic Settings: High

Comparison: Particle Performance Metric

Originally intended to demonstrate new processing effects added to Half Life 2: Episode 2 and future projects, the particle benchmark condenses what can be found throughout HL2:EP2 and combines it all into one small but deadly package. This test does not symbolize the performance scale for just Episode Two exclusively, but also for many other games and applications that utilize multi-core processing and particle effects. This benchmark might be a little old, but is still very highly-threaded and thus will keep scaling nicely as processors gain more and more threads. As you will see the benchmark does not score in FPS but rather in its own "Particle Performance Metric", which is useful for direct CPU comparisons.

X3: Terran Conflict

X3: Terran Conflict 1.2.0.0
Resolution: 1920x1080
Texture & Shader Quality: High
Antialiasing 4X
Anisotropic Mode: 8X
Glow Enabled

Game Benchmark
Comparison: FPS (Frames per Second)

X3: Terran Conflict (X3TC) is the culmination of the X-series of space trading and combat simulator computer games from German developer Egosoft. With its vast space worlds, intricately detailed ships, and excellent effects, it remains a great test of modern CPU performance. While the X3 Reality engine is single-threaded, it provides us with an interesting look at performance in an old school game environment.

Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward Benchmark

Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward
Resolution: 1920x1080
Texture & Shader Quality: Maximum IQ
DirectX 11
Fullscreen

Game Benchmark
Comparison: Generated Score

Square Enix released this benchmarking tool to rate how your system will perform in Heavensward, the expansion to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. This official benchmark software uses actual maps and playable characters to benchmark gaming performance and assign a score to your PC.

Grand Theft Auto V

DirectX Version: DirectX 11
Resolution: 1920x1080
FXAA: On
MSAA: X4
NVIDIA TXAA: Off
Anisotropic Filtering: X16
All advanced graphics settings off.

In GTA V, we utilize the handy in-game benchmarking tool. We do ten full runs of the benchmark and average the results of pass 3 since they are the least erratic. We do additional runs if some of the results are clearly anomalous. The Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) is ostensibly multi-threaded, but it definitely places the bulk of the CPU load on only one or two threads.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Resolution: 1920x1080
Graphical Quality: Custom
Mesh/Shadow/Texture Filtering/Vegetation Range: Ultra
Lighting/Texture Quality/Ambient Occlusion: High
Depth of Field/Order Independent Transparency/Tesselation: Enabled

With its high resolution textures and several other visual tweaks, Shadow of Mordor’s open world is also one of the most detailed around. This means it puts massive load on graphics cards and should help point towards which GPUs will excel at next generation titles. We do three full runs of the benchmark and average the results.

 

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Voltage Regulation / Power Consumption

Voltage Regulation

Since it is a gaming-oriented model, we aren't surprised that the Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon does not have any onboard voltage measurement points, which is what we usually rely on in order to accurately measure the various system voltages. As a result, in this abbreviated overview, we utilized the AIDA64 System Stability Test to put a very substantial load on the system while also monitoring the stability of the all-important CPU Vcore line. This was achieved with a 90 minute stress test, and in order to increase the strain on the motherboard's voltage regulation components we overclocked our Core i7-7700K to 4.8Ghz at 1.35V (in the BIOS). Although voltage droop is part Intel's specifications, we utilized the Load-Line Calibration (LLC) settings in order to see if this motherboard has what it takes to maintain a rock steady vCore line.

Although the above only represents an approximately 15 minute portion of the 90 minute run, we watched attentively throughout and there were never any dips or spikes, period. The vCore line was straight as an arrow throughout and it never deviated from 1.352V. You can't really ask for better than that.


Power Consumption

For this section, every energy saving feature was enabled in the BIOS and the Windows power plan was changed from High Performance to Balanced. For our idle test, we let the system idle for 15 minutes and measured the peak wattage through our UPM EM100 power meter. For our CPU load test, we ran Prime 95 In-place large FFTs on all available threads, measuring the peak wattage via the UPM EM100 power meter. For our overall system load test, we ran Prime 95 on all available threads while simultaneously loading the GPU with 3DMark Vantage - Test 6 Perlin Noise.

At default clocks, this MSI model achieved the lowest idle numbers of any Z270 motherboard so far, and it was second only to the ASUS Maximus IX Hero in CPU load and overall system load. When you look at the Manual OC results, the same holds true. The MSI had the best idle power consumption yet, and it fell behind the ASUS for the two load tests.

 

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Conclusion

Conclusion

If we have to describe the MSI Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon in one sentence, it would be: quirky, yet competent. It is quirky strange in the sense that we have no idea why the designers chose to separate the SATA ports when there was ample PCB room to place all six side-by-side. It is quirky good in that it features an angled USB 3.0 header, which is exceedingly rare even though it’s so useful when it comes to helping with cable management. It is also cool that MSI have developed a solution – with the M.2 Shield – to the problem of M.2 SSDs getting radiated with heat from graphics cards. Lastly, it is quirky bad in the sense that they sacrificed one PCI-E x1 slot by placing in directly under the primary PCI-E x16 slot, instead of above it. As soon as a dual-slot graphics is installed that PCI-E x1 slot is unusable, so they shouldn’t have even bothered including it.

When we looked over the onboard audio solution, it had all the elements needed to excel. A new Realtek ALC1220 audio codec covered by an EMI cover, a proven TI OP1652 op-amp, Japanese audio-grade capacitors, and an audio separation line designed to further reduce the effects of EMI. However, the Audio Boost 4 did not really shine in our tests. While it posted an overall rating of “very good”, it achieved numbers that placed it last among the four Z270 motherboards that we have reviewed...and almost all Z170 models too. In the grand scheme of things this might mean very little, since the qualitative audio quality is perfectly acceptable, but we do wonder what could have been improved on the engineering side.

The Mystic Light RGB LED lighting feature is an interesting one. The lighting itself is powerful and well implemented in the four key areas. Also, the light shining out of the LAN port (and associated USB ports) is a pretty cool trick. The colours are vibrant, and the effects are as eye-catching as the competitions. However, we do wish that there were some more intelligent effects, like having the LEDs ‘dance’ with the beat of your music and other real-time effects like reacting to CPU temperature. Also, and most importantly, we don’t understand the lack of a UEFI-based means of controlling the LEDs, if only an on/off option. Users shouldn’t need to install an application just to disable something that they don’t want. Speaking of software, MSI's overall software offerings are excellent. The included utilities cover just about every area that we can think of, and the fact that they all worked out-of-the-box without any hiccups is a testament to MSI's software engineers.

When it came time to overclock, the Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon proved itself capable, but not quite at the same level as the competition, at least with respect to automatic overclocking. Whereas competing motherboards have 2-3 auto OC features, this motherboard only has one, and it’s not exactly aggressive or option-rich. In the UEFI or a Windows app, you can click on a button to enable Game Boost, and it will overclock a Core i7-7700K to 4.8GHz at a very reasonable 1.30V while also setting a decent DDR4-3200 memory speed. While we greatly approve of the fact that MSI had the guts to punch up the memory clock – no other manufacturer dares attempt to cross the DDR4-3000 mark – we wish that they were as courageous when it came to the CPU core clock. While 4.8GHz is okay, it becomes much less so when the CPU automatically downclocks to 4.4GHz under certain heavily multi-threaded workloads. At this frequency, it actually posts lower performance numbers than the processor does at stock settings, since our chip tends to natively hover around 4.5GHz no matter the load at default. When we took over for some manual overclocking, this motherboard and its excellent UEFI aided us in reaching a 5.0Ghz CPU core clock, and it was also able to properly apply our G.Skill DDR4-3866 memory kit’s XMP profile, even though that is above the DDR4-3800 mark that this model is officially certified for. Underpromise and overdeliver? That’s a rarity in this industry. Regrettably, when we tried to push memory speeds even higher, stability quickly became an issue that we couldn’t tweak our way out of. Nevertheless, 5.0GHz and DDR4-3866 are two marks that are indicative of a well designed motherboard, both in terms of hardware (VRM) and software (UEFI). Our voltage regulation test proved as much, with the vCore line remaining level throughout the stress test.

There’s nothing terribly wrong with this motherboard, but it has a lot of quirks. Enough of them that it perhaps stops being endearing, and crosses into annoying. Its mid-range price, solid performance, general ease-of-use, and very respectable feature set put up a brave fight, but we aren’t quite convinced that this model can hold its own is the face of fierce competition.