Connectors and I/O

In total, MSI equipped the Z270 Gaming M7 motherboard with six SATA 6Gbps connectors, which have all been natively wired to the PCH. Right next to those six SATA ports there is one U.2 connector. Between the full-sized PCIe slots there is a total of three M.2 x4 Gen 3 slots. With this motherboard you get three full-sized PCIe Gen 3.0 and three PCIe x1 Gen 3.0 slots and all of them have been painted black. All threee full-sized PCIe x16 slots 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 do 16x/8x SLI/CrossFire and 8x/8x/4x CrossFireX (3-way). Basically these are the standard options you get with any Intel's Z270 based motherboard, that does not feature a PLX chip. The placement of the PCIe connectors has been well thought. Apart from that there are two PCIe x1 Gen 3.0 slots. Something that is almost standard nowadays with premium motherboards. Apart from that there is a CMOS reset button as well as a debug LED.

There is a total of six fan headers on the MSI Z270 Gaming M7 which is enough, to provide a high-end system with fresh air. The headers have been located close to the CPU as well as spread over the board. Other than that it's a good thing that all of them feature four pins, which allows for rpm regulation in BIOS as well as under Windows. Furthermore there is a plethora of additional headers you find listed below:

Lighting

• 1 x 4-pin RGB LED connector

Fan headers

• 1 x 4-pin CPU fan connector
• 4 x 4-pin system fan connectors

Watercooling connectors

• 1 x 4-pin water-pump-fan connector

Overclocking and debugging connectors

• 1 x 2-pin Slow mode connector
• 1 x 2-pin OC retry connector

Looking at the external connectors placed directly at the I/O-panel, MSI equipped the new Z270 Gaming M7 motherboard with two USB 3.1 gen1 ports, two USB 3.1 gen2 ports (Type-C and Type-A), three USB 2.0 ports, one Gigabit Ethernet port, one HDMI and a DisplayPort connector as well as the analogue audio panel with an optical out.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 14 - SiSoft Sandra 2
Page 2 - Specs and Delivery	Page 15 - UC Bench
Page 3 - Features	Page 16 - Super Pi 1M / 32M
Page 4 - Layout	Page 17 - wPrime 1024M Multi Core
Page 5 - Connectors and I/O	Page 18 - Cinebench
Page 6 - BIOS	Page 19 - Tomb Raider
Page 7 - Test setup	Page 20 - Metro Last Light
Page 8 - Preview / Gallery	Page 21 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 9 - 3D Mark	Page 22 - Power Consumption
Page 10 - 3D Mark 11	Page 23 - Performance Rating
Page 11 - 3D Mark Vantage	Page 24 - Price Comparison
Page 12 - PC Mark 8	Page 25 - Conclusion
Page 13 - SiSoft Sandra 1