Connectors and I/O
In total, MSI equipped the Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC motherboard with six SATA 6Gbps connectors, which have all been natively wired to the PCH and two of them are straight and not angled. Above the first PCIe x16 slot there is the first M.2 slot and on top of the third full size PCIe slot, there is the second M.2 x4 Gen 3 slot. With this motherboard you get three PCIe
x16 Gen 3.0 and three PCIe x1 Gen
3.0 slots and all of them have been painted black, while the first two of them received metal reinforcements. From top to bottom the
full-sized PCIe slots have been wired using 16 lanes, 8 lanes and 8 lanes. This means
you can build 16x/8x SLI/CrossFire and 8x/8x/8x CrossFireX (3-way). These
are basically the standard options you get with any Intel Z370 based motherboard, that
does not feature a PLX chip. The placement of the PCIe slots has been well-thought.
Unfortunately there are no
practical onboard power- and reset-buttons on this board but at least there are few diagnostic LEDs that can help in the case of a failure.
The MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC motherboard features a total of six fan headers,
which is enough to provide a normal gaming rig with
enough fresh air. A closer look at the pictures below shows where they have
been placed. All six fan headers feature 4-pin and support PWM functionality. Therefore it's possible to control fan speeds from within Windows as well as the BIOS.
Connectors
- 1 x PS/2 keyboard/ mouse combo port
- 2 x USB 2.0 Type-A ports
- 1 x DisplayPort port
- 1 x USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A port
- 1 x USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port
- 4 x USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A ports
- 1 x HDMI port
- 1 x LAN (RJ45) port
- 5 x OFC audio jacks
- 1 x Optical S/PDIF OUT connector