MSI Z370 SLI Plus Review
Published by Luca Rocchi on 15.03.18Conclusion
| General | + | - | |
| It's quite obvious that the MSI Z370 SLI Plus 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 black. Apart from that there are features like several 4-pin PWM headers and a good storage solution. The MSI Z370 SLI Plus is currently listed on Geizhals for 133 Euro, which is perfectly reasonable considering the feature list. | -
Design - Layout - Features - 2 x M.2 x4 Slot |
||
| Layout | + | - | |
The layout of the MSI Z370 SLI Plus has been well thought. This model features six angled SATA connectors, which can be found in the bottom right corner. Since the Z370 SLI Plus 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. Although the design has been improved, we still see cheap plastic covers all over the motherboard. |
- Space around the CPU socket | - Cheap covers
|
|
| Performance | + | - | |
At the moment our test setup includes eight motherboards but during next weeks we will add more models. Calculating the average of all benchmarks results we ran, we see that this board sits very close to our 100%. On another note, we had at energy efficiency where this board scores second. |
|
||
| 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 |
||
| Recommendation | + | - | |
| If you're looking to build a mid-range gaming system based on Coffee Lake processors, the MSI SLI Plus is a great place to start. Althoug the rather low price, the MSI Z370 SLI Plus is a well equipped Z370 motherboard with a decent list of features. At the moment the board is available on Geizhals for 133 Euro excluding shipping costs, which makes it definitely affordable. | |||
| Rating | |||
| We give the MSI Z370 SLI Plus excellent 4 out of 5 stars. | |||
| Navigate through the articles | |
MSI Z370 Gaming M5 Review |
|
|
|