Connectique et I/O

In total, MSI equipped the Z170A Gaming M5 motherboard with six SATA 6Gbps connectors, which have all been natively wired to the PCH. This means you get six native SATA-III ports, whereas four can be combined to two SATA Express connectors. Above the first PCIe x16 slot there is the first M.2 x4 Gen 3 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 four PCIe x1 Gen 3.0 slots and all of them have been painted black. The First two PCIe x16 slots receive metal reinforcement. From top to bottom for the PCIe 16x slots have been wired using 16 lanes, 8 lanes and 8 lanes. This means you can do 8x/8x SLI/CrossFire and 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. Unfortunately there are no practical onboard power- and reset-buttons but at least there is a debug LED.



The MSI Z170A Gaming M5 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 Z170A Gaming M5 motherboard with a P/S2 connector, six USB 3.1 ports (1 Type-C connector), two USB 3.0 ports (one Hotkey + BIOS Flashback port) one Gigabit Ethernet port, one HDMI and a DVI port and the analogue audio panel.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 4 - Layout
Page 2 - Spécifications / Bundle	Page 5 - Connectique et I/O
Page 3 - Features	Page 6 - Conclusion