Military Class 5 Components |
Since years MSI has been using digital power designs. On this board we find the latest implementation of their Military Class Components, which is meanwhile in its fifth generation. This board comes equiped with Hi-c Caps, Titanium Chokes and Dark CAPs for high stability, durability and
efficiency. |
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MSI Steel Armor
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There are two PCIe x16 slots on this particular board, which have been equipped with a steel frame. If you place a large and heavy gaming graphics card, while the board is mounted in a case, you will notice, that over time the slots starts to bend by a little bit. Furthermore, when transporting a system it can happen, that the PCIe slot break by the sheer force, when somebody is not dealing carefully with an assembled system. In both cases the steel armor should help increasing protection of the PCIe slots. |
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DDR4 Boost + XMP LED
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MSI equipped this board with fully isolated traces from the CPU to the DDR4 memory. This should help increasing stability and it should also be possible to reach higher maximum DDR4 clock speeds.
XMP LED shows when you're using an optimal XMP profile.
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Audio Boost 3
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MSI equips its latest and greatest motherboard with an improved audio
solution which includes the Realtek ALC1150 chip, Dual headphone amplifier. At the I/O shield we find golden audio
jacks which is to improve the audio signals as well as high quality capacitors
from nichicon and the PCB
separation, as well as USB audio power to enhance USB audio quality and
stable 5V power and better signal transmission over USB. |
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Killer Ethernet
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It is rather obvious that MSI is not only
optimizing this board for overclocking but for gaming as well. Next to
the beefed up audio solution there is a Killer Ethernet chip, which
gives gamers additional control over a variety of network settings,
which in the end can help reduce latency. The application, which comes with the board allows the user to proritize network/internet traffic on an application level. If you're internet connection is limited you can define that gaming traffic receives the highest priority, which will allow for a smooth gaming experience even if you're downloading large files in the background. |
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M.2 Support
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The
Z170A Gaming M7 motherboard from MSI features two M.2 slots which are placed between the PCIe slots. This motherboard can be equipped with SSDs in M.2 format. Both slots are connected via four PCIe x4 lanes, offering up to 32 Gbps bandwidth. These slots can also be equipped with NVMe adapters, which are optionally available. |
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Supermicro C7Z170-SQ Review 