MSI Z170A XPower Gaming Titanium Edition Review
Published by Marc Büchel on 14.10.15Page:
Conclusion
| General | + | - | |
| A closer look at the motherboard lineup from MSI reveals that the Z170 XPower Titanium Edition is their flagship model, regarding their gaming branded products. Of course it comes with some really neat features, like for example dual M.2 x4 Gen 3, OC Dashboard, Game Boost and the new updated UEFI BIOS. The MSI Z170 XPower Titanium Edition motherboard is powered by a 16-phase CPU VRM which is enough for an overclocked system even if you wanted to do extreme benching using liquid nitrogen as coolant. MSI also equipped this board with features specific to gamers including a beefed-up audio solution. | -
Design - Layout - Features - 2 x M.2 x4 Gen 3.0 Slots |
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| Layout | + | - | |
| Overall, the MSI Z170 XPower Titanium Edition's layout has been well thought. Once more practical are the angled SATA connectors that you can find on almost all motherboards nowadays. Other than that there is an internal USB3.1 header. We always love it when we find practical power- and reset-buttons alongside a clear CMOS button. Furthermore there is even a debug display. This one is always useful in case there is an issue with a component in your system or the board itself. It also features four full-sized PCI Express slots, which have been very well positioned. Apart from that there are three PCIe Gen3 x1 slots onboard, and they can be found in between the PCIe Slot. Furthermore the XPower Gaming Titanium Edition has also been equipped with two M.2 x4 Gen 3 slots. Furthermore you get six USB3.0, three USB2.0, eight SATA3 ports and one internal USB3.1 headers for two additional USB3.1 ports as well as two USB2 connectors for four more USB2.0 ports. | - Angled SATA connectors
- Power/Reset-Button onboard - Debug display - Space around the CPU socket - Audio Solution |
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| Performance | + | - | |
| Calculating the average of all 3D benchmarks we ran, we see that this is the second fastest board regarding 3D performance. When taking the average of all 2D results this board scores 6th out of then places. In general this board performs very consistent regarding 3D performance. On another note, we had a look at power consumption and since this is a board with many features, energy efficiency is average, whereas idle power consumption is the highest we've measured so far. | - 3DMark - Metro Last Light - Sleeping Dogs |
- 3DMark Vantage - Idle Power Consuption |
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| Overclocking / BIOS | + | - | |
| MSI has put a lot of time and effort into making their BIOS look nicer and more user friendly. Especially when we compare this version of MSI BIOS to the first UEFI BIOS from MSI, it simply cannot be compared, since the two are worlds apart. What's almost self-explanatory is that you get a lot of tuning and tweaking options in order to optimize the system towards your needs. We also like the entry screen which displays a lot of useful information. Apart from that overclocking our test CPU to 5.0 GHz was straight forward and there were no issues whatsoever. | - Sheer amount of
options - Design |
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| Recommendation | + | - | |
| The MSI Z170 XPower Titanium Edition is a very well equipped Z170 motherboard, which features solid perfomance. Currently this board costs 283 Euro, which is rather steep. Should you like the design and should you have the funds at your disposal, this is a great board. | -
Price
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Gaming - Enthusiast - Overclocking |
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| Rating | |||
| We give the MSI Z170 XPower Titanium Edition good 4 out of 5 stars. | |||
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