MSI H370 Gaming Plus Review
Category : H370
Published by Luca Rocchi on 09.07.18
With the H370 Gaming Plus, MSI has a well equipped mid-range motherboard in its portfolio, which comes with a bunch of interesting features. There are for example four PCIe x1 slots, two PCIe 3.0 slots and one M.2 connector. Apart from that the Gaming Plus features a black color scheme with red accents. At the moment this model is listed for 98 Euro on Geizhals.
Specs and Delivery
| Chipset | Intel H370 |
| Memory | Dual Channel DDR4, 4 x DIMM, Max. 64 GB DDR4, 2666 OC, Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory |
| Slots |
|
| Audio | Realtek ALC892
|
| Storage | Intel H370 chipset
|
| Network |
|
| Internal Connectors |
|
| Extrenal Connectors |
|
| Formfactor | ATX (30.5cm x 24.4cm) |
Features
Military Class 5 Components |
Since years MSI has been using digital power designs. On this board we find the 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. |
|
MSI Steel Armor |
There are two full-sized PCIe slots on this particular board, only one of them has 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 slot starts to bend by a little bit. Furthermore, when carrying or shipping a system, it can happen that the PCIe slot breaks by the sheer force, when somebody is not dealing carefully with an assembled system. In both cases the steel armor should help by increasing the protection of the PCIe slots. |  |
Mystic Light Sync |
With Mystic Light Sync you can create your own color scheme using the full RGB palette of colors as well as different lighting effects. With this feature you can control and also syncronize RGB LEDs from other components such as CPU coolers, graphics cards or even case lighting. Manging this feature happens from within Windows thanks to the MSI Gaming App. |  |
M.2 Support |
The H370 Gaming Plus motherboard from MSI features one M.2 slot which is placed close the first PCIe slot. This motherboard can be equipped with one 22110 M.2 SSD, where the figures behind the "22" stand for the actual length of the M.2 SSD in millimeter. |  |
Layout
As we've already mentioned in the introduction the MSI H370 Gaming Plus motherboard comes with a great looking design. The PCB has a matte black finish and the heatsinks feature red covers. On the PCH you'll also find the neat looking MSI logo. The heatsinks have been shaped with a lot of attention to detail. The layout in general has been well thought and there are plenty of useful features, like five SATA 6Gbps ports and one M.2 Gen 3 x4 slot.
The H370 Gaming Plus comes with 7+1 phases for the CPU socket area. We identified a Richetek RT3607BC phase PWM controller. Furthermore there are several Sinopower SM4336 for the low-side MOSFET and SM4337 for the high-side.
This board has been equipped with a total of four DIMM-slots. Officially supported is everything up to DDR4 2666. There is engough space between the DIMM-slots and the CPU socket which means that you wont encounter compatibility problems with big coolers even when you choose to install RAM with big heatspreaders. Also supported are Xtreme Memory Profiles (XMP) in version 2.0.
The PCH as well as the current converters are being held at adequate temperatures via passive heatsinks. The heatsinks for the current converters are made from two aluminium blocks which are not linked by an additional heatpipe. The PCH heatsinks are all quite simple and flat. The cooling blocks have been very well made and they've been perfetcly attached to the board to provide enough pressure on the components they have to cool. The aluminium blocks are black with grey sheet metal covers, overall resembling a new and fresh looking design.
Connectors and I/O
In total, MSI equipped the H370 Gaming Plus motherboard with five SATA 6Gbps connectors, which have all been natively wired to the PCH. Above the first PCIe x16 slot there is the M.2 slot which is compatbile with 22110 units. With this motherboard you get two full-sized PCIe Gen 3.0 and four PCIe x1 Gen 3.0 slots and all of them have been painted black. The first full-sized PCIe x16 slot received metal reinforcement. From top to bottom the full-sized PCIe slots have been wired using 16 lanes and 4 lanes. This means you can't do any SLI setup but only a slow CrossFire setup. Basically these are the standard options you get with any Intel's H370 based motherboard. The placement of the PCIe slots has been well thought.
There is a total of seven fan headers on the H370 Gaming Plus which is enough to provide a well equipped ATX 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:
Fan headers
- 1 x CPU Fan connector(s)
- 5 x Chassis Fan connector(s)
Watercooling connectors
- 1 x W_PUMP+ connector
Connectors
- 1 x PS/2 GAMING Device Port
- 2 x USB 2.0 Port
- 1 x Gigabit LAN
- 5 x HD Audio Connectors
- 1 x DVI-D
- 1 x DisplayPort
- 1 x USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A + C
- 2 x USB 3.1 Gen1 Ports
- 1 x Optical S/PDIF-Out
BIOS
The most recent version of MSI’s UEFI BIOS presents itself with an attractive design, and you can not only monitor system information, CPU and motherboard temperature, CPU voltage and DRAM status but you can also create your own fan profiles for the different PWM headers. Other than that MSI has been working on the overclocking options, meaning they've added memory profiles to this motherboard. This helps making memory overclocking quite a bit easier.
Test setup
Hardware |
|
| Motherboard |
|
| Processor | Intel Core i7-8700K @ 3.7 GHz |
| Memory | 16 GB (4x4) Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000 CL15-15-15-36 2T |
| Graphic card | ASUS GeForce GTX 980 |
| Driver | GeForce Game Ready Driver 385.69 |
| Hard disk |
|
| Power supply | Seasonic X-650 |
| OS | Windows 10 x64 Updated |
Preview / Gallery
3DMark
Tipe Spy - CPU Test
3DMark is a benchmarking tool created and developed by Futuremark Corporation to determine the 3D rendering performance of GPU and CPU. In this article we only use the Physix workload testing routing to find out how capable a processor is. The score is measured in points where higher is better.
Cinebench R15
Cinebench is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer's 3D rendering capabilities. The test scenario uses all of your system's processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene (from the viral "No Keyframes" animation by AixSponza). This scene makes use of various algorithms to stress all available processor cores.
SiSoft Sandra 1
SiSoft Sandra is a theoretical multi purpose benchmark suite which is able to show differences in CPU architectures. Therefore on this page you'll find Arithmetic-, Multimedia- and Cryptography-benchmarks.
SiSoft Sandra 2
UC Bench
SuperPi 1M
Right Mark Audio Analyzer
Crystal Disk Mark 5
Power Consumption
Performance Rating
Price Comparison
| Model |
Geizhals.eu |
| ASRock Z370M-ITX/ac | |
| ASUS ROG Maximus X Apex | |
| ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero | |
| ASUS ROG STRIX Z370-I Gaming | |
| Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 3 | |
| MSI H370 Gaming Plus | |
| MSI H370 Gaming Pro Carbon | |
| MSI Z370 Gaming M5 | |
| MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC | |
| MSI Z370 SLI Plus |
Conclusion
| General | + | - | |
| It's quite obvious that the MSI H370 Gaming 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 and red. Apart from that there are features like several 4-pin PWM headers and a good storage solution. The MSI H370 Gaming Plus is currently listed on Geizhals for 98 Euro. | -
Design - Layout - Features - M.2 x4 Slot |
||
| Layout | + | - | |
The layout of the MSI H370 Gaming Plus has been well thought. This model features five angled SATA connectors, which can be found in the bottom right corner. Since the H370 Gaming 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 one of them is being equipped with metal reinforcement plates. There is a total of two full sized PCI Express slots and four PCIe x1 slots. In addition there is 6-pin PCIe power connector which might be useful if you want use this motherboard for mining PCs. In order to keep the price low, MSI has replaced the ALC1220 audio chip with the more cheap ALC892. |
- Space around the CPU socket | - Realtek ALC892 |
|
| Performance | + | - | |
At the moment our test setup includes ten motherboards but during the 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 first. |
|
||
| 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. . | - Sheer amount of
options - Design |
||
| Recommendation | + | - | |
| If you're looking to build a mid-range gaming system based on Coffee Lake processors, the MSI H370 Gaming Plus is a great place to start. The MSI H370 Gaming Plus is a well equipped H370 motherboard with a decent list of features. At the moment the board is available on Geizhals for 98 Euro excluding shipping costs. | - Gaming - Mining |
||
| Rating | |||
| We give the MSI H370 Gaming Plus excellent 4 out of 5 stars. | |||
