MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon Review
Published by Marc Büchel on 02.01.18Page:
Conclusion
| General | + | - | |
| It's quite obvious that the MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC is a product where the vendor is aiming for an attractive price point. This motherboard features a great looking design, which has been kept in a carbon-like look based on a black PCB. Apart from that there are features like two M.2 slots, several 4-pin PWM header and a decent audio solution. The MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC is currently listed on Geizhals for 163 Euro, which is perfectly reasonable considering the feature list. | -
Design - Layout - Features - 2 x M.2 x4 Slot |
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| Layout | + | - | |
| The layout of the MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC has been well thought. This model features four angled SATA connectors and two straight SATA ports, which can be found in the bottom right corner. Since the Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC is a mid-range motherboard, it's no surprise that there aren't any power- and/or reset-buttons. Apart from that we like the placement of the full-sized PCI-Express slots and two of them are being equipped with metal reinforcement plates. There is a total of three full sized PCI Express slots and three PCIe x1 slots. This means that there is plenty of space for graphics cards in multi GPU setups to breathe. In addition there are two M.2 slots. | - Space around the CPU
socket
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- No power/reset-button onboard | |
| Performance | + | - | |
At the moment our test setup includes three motherboards but during next weeks we will add more models. Calculating the average of all benchmarks results we ran, we see that this board scores 3rd. If we check a bit closer, we see that the MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC is about 2,8% slower than the ROG STRIX Z370-I Gaming in 3D Mark benchmarks. Furthermore, speaking about 2D performance, we see a good result for the MSI motherboard in SuperPI 1M. On another note, we had at energy efficiency where this board scores 3rd. |
- 2D Performance |
- Power consumption | |
| 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 GHz was straight forward and there were no issues whatsoever. | - Sheer amount of
options - Design |
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| Recommendation | + | - | |
| The MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC is a well equipped Z370 motherboard. At the moment this board isn't so quick according to our 2D and 3D benchmarks. We expect a better BIOS from MSI that can improve the overall performance of this motherboard. On top of that it comes with a decent feature set and a price of 163 Euro excluding shipping costs, which makes it definitely affordable. | |||
| Rating | |||
| We give the MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC excellent 4 out of 5 stars. | |||
| Navigate through the articles | |
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