Connectique et 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.