MSI has announced their third PRO Series motherboard, the all-black Z170A SLI PLUS.
"MSI, leading in motherboard design, completes the PRO Series motherboard line-up with the launch of the all black Z170A SLI PLUS motherboard. Inheriting DNA from the critically acclaimed X99A SLI PLUS motherboard, the Z170A SLI PLUS is powerful, packed with features and styled with class."
While not lacking in stealthy looks from the black PCB to the matching RAM slots and heatsinks, the specifications of this new SLI PLUS board place it firmly into the premium category.
Features include Intel Gigabit LAN, MSI’s DDR4 Boost technology (which isolates memory traces on the board), Turbo M.2 (and U.2) with speeds up to 32 Gb/s with NVMe SSDs, and the Steel Armor PCI Express slots. And while SLI is right there in the title, there is also support for AMD Crossfire with those super-strong PCIe slots.
The board is fabricated with MSI’s Military Class 4 components including super ferrite chokes and all solid capacitors, and also offer a “EZ Debug” LED and overvoltage protection. In addition to support for the fastest internal storage standards (M.2, U.2, and SATA Express), the Z170A SLI PLUS offers full USB 3.1 Gen2 support for transfers up to 10 Gb/s for compatible devices.
- Supports 6th Gen Intel Core / Pentium / Celeron processors for LGA 1151 socket
- Supports DDR4-3600 Memory (OC)
- DDR4 Boost
- USB 3.1 Gen2
- Turbo M.2 32Gb/s + Turbo U.2 ready + USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C + SATA 6Gb/s
- Steel Armor PCI-E slots; Supports NVIDIA SLI and AMD Crossfire
- OC Genie 4
- Click BIOS 5
- Audio Boost
- Military Class 4
- Guard-Pro
- EZ Debug LED
- Overvoltage Protection
- 4K UHD Support
- Windows 10 Ready
Pricing and availability were not specified with this morning’s announcement.
nice to see them continuing
nice to see them continuing the whole ‘krait’ aesthetic from z97. and this board is an improvement in that regard, imo. they’re mpower line of boards werent bad looking either.
This is nothing like
This is nothing like Krait.
Krait had a very obvious “high contrast black & white” scheme, this here motherboard on the other hand is almost completely black. Even it’s PCI-e slots are NOT white, but metallic, and they LOOK somewhat white on pictures simply because the metal reflects light and creates shine (while in actuality these slots are NOT painted at all). If you look on those PCI-e slots from underneath or the sides, they’re actually purely polished metal pieces.
This “Premium” board is
This “Premium” board is lacking in pretty major ways. When i first saw it I thought it’s everything i want…
Till i saw
a) Not all right angled SATA connectors.
b) VGA on the back panel
c) No Optical out for audio
d) Only 4 USB ports on the back panel?! (not counting the type-C)
e) It has 2 PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse.
It’s 2015, only 4 USB ports is inexcusable…why have two internal USB 3.0 headers when practically all cases only have 2 ports on the front panel. Having VGA rather than displayport is ridiculous too considering you can get adapters for HDMI, DVI and DP.
And the 2 PS/2 ports is just utterly ridiculous, I can’t see many PS/2 keyboards/mice for sale. A single port is fine (if unnecessary for most people).
They’ve done a lot right on the board with the colour scheme, armour on the PCI-E ports, decent layout (apart from the SATA) but then ruin it with woefully inadequate back panel I/O.
Product: MSI source link:
Product: MSI source link: Gigabyte , Sebastian needs more coffee.
This is the first MSi board
This is the first MSi board in a long while (like, in at least 10 years) which I actually like. I’ll be getting it when it’s going to be available in my country, hope it won’t disappoint me (I haven’t been using MSi’s boards in my personal builds for many years, as well Gigabyte’s, so I really hope that MSi would be able to finally redeem itself in my eyes this time, or else…that won’t a pretty sight).
I recommend avoiding the
I recommend avoiding the brand. MSI has an issue with putting quality VRMs on their motherboards and their warranty terms allow them to mail you a pro-rated check if/when their boards fail. If you look up MSI VRM failures you’ll find a forum thread dedicated to VRM failures that’s mainly MSI.
The main three factors which
The main three factors which threw MSi completely out of grace for me personally for so many years, are that their motherboards can’t OverClock for jack shit (and even when/if they can, which is quite rare in itself, they’re unstable and buggy as F, usually crashing/locking up hard without even POST’ing when you try to revert to default frequencies from recently applied OverClock, and some of their boards also hard-restrained to some particular frequencies above which you usually can’t go no matter what you do, it’s usually 4.5~4.8GHz point or somewhere around that, which is simply LAME), that they usually have extremely crappy layouts (especially their choice of placement for POST display and CMOS battery’s slot), AND (obviously) that they’re asininely highly overpriced for what they really are (especially after all that “Military Class” marketing snake oil crap bullshit started).
mr. hsu is wealwy wealwy
mr. hsu is wealwy wealwy scareoud XD!! :p
oh…and drawing distinctions between two boards that have the exact same color palette…well its ‘splitting hairs’ at best. i hear twitch just bought the rights to “painting w/Bob Ross”. U should check it out! :p
‘nothing like krait’… so cute! XD
English, do you speak it?
English, do you speak it?