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Review: MSI Z270 GAMING M7 motherboard

We analyze the features and characteristics of the MSI Z270 GAMING M7 motherboard, which is designed for Intel Kaby Lake processors and for overclocking.

We have reviewed the Intel i7 7700K processor and the Intel i3 7350K, from the Kaby Lake family, both of which require a motherboard to match with the Z270 chipset. A motherboard to match one of these processors could be the MSI Z270 GAMING M7, a motherboard with excellent characteristics that offers us great quality. This motherboard is characterized by being one of the most complete and powerful on the market, and its design is an evolution of the MSI Z270 GAMING PRO CARBON.

As we well know, the motherboards with LGA 1151 socket and Z200 Series chipset, which is intended for Kaby Lake processors, but also offers support for Skylake processors. This motherboard has high-end specs, with DIMM slots for DDR4 RAM and PCIe 3.0 x16 ports offering shielding. This motherboard also has great on-board connectivity, having SATA, U.2 ports and up to three M.2 SSD ports. This motherboard also has the M.2 SHIELD heatsink, the cooling system for M.2 SSD units developed by MSI. The motherboard is directly designed for overclocking, that is why it has specific buttons for starting, restarting or entering overclocking mode.


FEATURES


This motherboard is designed for overclocking with Kaby Lake processors and to make overclocking as stable as possible, no less than 11 VRM phases have been integrated. The power supply for the processor is based on an 8-pin ATX connector and has an additional 4-pin connectors, to improve the voltage that will reach the processor and be as stable as possible. Right next to the socket, we find four slots for DDR4 RAM, which supports 2400MHz and 2600MHz modules, without the need to make XMP adjustments and through the XMP profiles we can reach memories of up to 4133MHz (if they are Kaby Lake motherboards, for Skylake this is reduced to 3600MHz using XMP profiles).


CONNECTIVITY


MSI has excellently nurtured this MSI Z270 GAMING M7 motherboard, to offer great expansion possibilities and large storage capacity. The motherboard has support for 2-Way SLI and 3-Way CrossFireX configurations, thanks to three PCIe 3.0 x16 ports, in x16 / x0 / x0, x8 / x8 / x0 and x8 / x4 / x4 configurations. Along with these three PCIe 3.0 x16 ports, we find another two PCIe 3.0 x1 ports, to connect dedicated sound cards, captures or storage units through a PCIe port.

The motherboard offers no less than three M.2 SSD connectors. The M2_1 supports drives up to 22110, while the M2_2 and M2_3 support drives up to 2280. These ports have support for the newer Intel Optane drives, but for this we need a BIOS update, as we recently learned. For storage, it also has six SATA 6Gbps ports and also has a U.2 port, which currently does not have much use, since there are not many units for this type of connector, but it never hurts to have one of these.


OC & LED


This motherboard has RGB LED lighting through MSI Mystic Light technology, what's more, this motherboard has a connector that synchronizes the lighting with RGB LED strips and other components that have this type of lighting. The motherboard also has special buttons for overclocking, since it is especially designed to be used for this practice, specifically it has in the lower right corner a power button on the motherboard, the system restart and a rotary switch to Boost gaming mode.


I / O PANEL


We move on to the area of ​​the rear panel, which has great connectivity, among them the PS / 2 connector for keyboard or mouse stands out, indistinctly and stands out because it is absurd that this connector is still used, when we hardly find peripherals with this connector. The motherboard also has three USB 2.0 ports, one of them is next to the Clear CMOS connector, which can also be used to install an updated BIOS through the USB port. As video outputs, it has an HDMI connector and a DisplayPort connector.

The motherboard is complemented by two USB 3.1 Gen 1 connectors, along with a USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A connector and a USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C connector. Regarding the network card, it uses the traditional RJ45 connector, although retouched with a red led, in addition, it is controlled by the Killer E2500 network card. Regarding sound, this motherboard has an optical S / PDIF connector and 3.5mm jack connectors, which offer us high quality sound up to 7.1 thanks to the custom sound card, controlled by the Realtek ALC1220 chip and high quality ChemiCon capacitors.


CONCLUSION


The MSI Z270 GAMING M7 motherboard is very complete and offers us excellent performance, designed especially for overclocking, as we can well see in the special buttons that this motherboard incorporates. It also has great connectivity for storage units, allowing you to install two M.2 SSD units in RAID 0, for example, achieving truly amazing read and write speeds, up to eight times higher than those of SSD units per SATA port.

Something increasingly common and fundamental in any high-end motherboard, are the shielding of the PCIe 3.0 x16 and the DIMM modules for the DDR4 RAM. We do not recommend using the M.2 SHIELD of this motherboard, since according to some analyzes carried out by some specialized media it would have the opposite effect, increasing the temperature in the M.2 SSD unit, with which we would have the opposite effect than expected.

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Robert Sole

Director of Contents and Writing of this same website, technician in renewable energy generation systems and low voltage electrical technician. I work in front of a PC, in my free time I am in front of a PC and when I leave the house I am glued to the screen of my smartphone. Every morning when I wake up I walk across the Stargate to make some coffee and start watching YouTube videos. I once saw a dragon ... or was it a Dragonite?

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