Connectors and I/O

In total, MSI equipped the Z170 XPower Titanium Edition motherboard with eight SATA 6Gbps connectors, which have all been natively wired to the PCH. This means thgere are eight native SATA-III ports, whereas four can be combined to two SATA Express connectors. Below the first PCIe x16 slot as well as below the third there is one M.2 x4 Gen 3 slot each. With this motherboard you get four full-sized PCIe slots and three PCIe x1 Gen 3.0, whereas the first and the thrid receive metal reinforcement. This should help protecting the slots from breaking while transporting a full system with graphic card installed. From top to bottom for the PCIe 16x slots have been wired using 16 lanes, 8 lanes, 8 lanes and 8 lanes. In reality the following configurations are possible: x16/0/0/x4, x8/0/x8/x4 or x8/x4/x4/x4. This means you can do 8x/8x SLI/CrossFire or 8x/8x/4x CrossFireX (3-way). Basically these are the standard options you get with any Intel's Z170 based motherboard, that does not feature a PLX chip. The placement of the PCIe connectors has been well thought. Something that is almost standard nowadays with premium motherboards are the practical onboard power and reset as well as clear CMOS button. Furtheremore there is also a debug LED. MSI equipped this board with two physical BIOS chips and an and their external OC Dashboard.

The MSI Z170 XPower Titanium Edition motherboard features a total of five fan headers, which is enough to provide a normal gaming rig with enough of fresh air. A closer look at the pictures below shows where they have been placed. All five fan headers feature 4 pins and support PWM functionality. Therefore it's possible to control fan speeds from within Windows as well as the BIOS.

Looking at the external connectors placed directly at the I/O-panel, MSI equipped the new Z170 XPower Titanium Edition motherboard with a P/S2 connector, six USB 3.1 ports, three USB 2.0 ports, one Gigabit Ethernet port, two HDMI and a DisplayPort output, a CLR_CMOS button as well as an optical out and the analogue audio panel.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 14 - SiSoft Sandra 2
Page 2 - Specs and Delivery	Page 15 - UC Bench
Page 3 - Features	Page 16 - Super Pi 1M / 32M
Page 4 - Layout	Page 17 - wPrime 1024M Multi Core
Page 5 - Connectors and I/O	Page 18 - Cinebench
Page 6 - BIOS	Page 19 - Tomb Raider
Page 7 - Test setup	Page 20 - Metro Last Light
Page 8 - Preview / Gallery	Page 21 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 9 - 3D Mark	Page 22 - Power Consumption
Page 10 - 3D Mark 11	Page 23 - Performance Rating
Page 11 - 3D Mark Vantage	Page 24 - Price Comparison
Page 12 - PC Mark 8	Page 25 - Conclusion
Page 13 - SiSoft Sandra 1