Final Words & Conclusion
Final Words & conclusion
Aside from trimming down on a few features there's very little wrong with the Z170A SLI PLUS motherboard. It has plenty of features for any given PC gamer with his or her DiY build including multi-GPU functionality. The complete dark black looks make the product look pretty nice as well (albeit taste is a personal thing of course). If the Rear IO connectors would have had black shielding I would have probably drooled all over the thing. The matte black looks terrific and is applied thanks to the new coating technology MSI currently has embedded. They have found a way to coat the PCB with a pattern and likely two tone colors combined with logo designs. In the years to come what vinyl wrapping is to cars, could become specialized coating for motherboards. The hardware itself is great and MSI is offering one of the better performing yet budget priced products out there in the Z170 segment, it lacks a few features though. I do miss AC WIFI and perhaps a second Ethernet jack preferably from Intel. Also a lacking SPDIF output and DisplayPort connector are on my bucket-list for this motherboard. But at a price level of roughly 150 USD, I can easily live without them. Performance wise the board seems to rock the 6700K processor we threw at it. Intel doesn't make and thus offer any reference motherboards anymore, so it is hard to define a reference processors performance point as the board mother-partners will do everything in their power to tweak out the last bit of performance. And sure, that's not a bad thing but there can be some platform (brand) performance differences. But yeah, the extra performance you see is mostly related to the higher base clocks. That's just the processor side, I mean the Z170 offer it all in terms of features, stability and reliability really, heaps of USB 3.0/3.1 connectors, plenty SATA3 ports, super dual fast M.2. and a lovely audio solution.
The performance is up there and combined with DDR4 memory this processor makes a good step forward. Combined with the series 100 chipset new features are available as well, SATA3 and M.2 we do not miss the lacking SATA Express connectors even the slightest bit. Then there's the added benefit of DDR4 memory that not only use less power, but the frequency can be so much higher as well, bringing more bandwidth and overall performance to the applications that require fast memory. Combine that with things like nice an Intel Gigabit jack, nice audio solutions on the new motherboards and things like USB 3.0 / 3.1. The overall platform experience is what it is all about for Skylake. Performance with kick-ass features.
USB 3.1 Gen 1 versus Gen2
The industry is pulling the weirdest trick in the books right now. Most boxes (packaging) are listing USB 3.0 (5 Gbps) as USB 3.1 Gen 1. Read that well as it means that USB 3.1 Gen 2 is the new REAL 3.1 connector with 10 Gbps. Totally lame and confusing for the end users. So remember, if you read USB 3.1 Gen 1, that really is 100% the same old USB 3.0 connector, and USB 3.1 Gen 2 is the new 10 Gbps connector.
Storage
Combined with 6 SATA 6Gbps ports we can hardly complain about anything. Nice are the recent developments on the M.2 interface, pop in a M.2 compatible PCI-E SSD and you'll see your SSD quickly perform in the 700/800 Mb/sec range. With the new NVMe devices like the 950 PRO from Samsung all of a sudden we hover at 2500 MB/sec thanks to the x4 PCIe Gen 3.0 interface connection allowing it 32 Gbps of bandwidth to work in. Craaaazy stuff.
Aesthetics
I stated it on the first paragraph, taste differs per person, but I like really like how the all black SLI PLUS is looking. Where I commented the two metal plated PCI-Express x16 slots in a previous review, they now make sense in an all matte dark design. The motherboard has no HALO LEDs to create a bit of a an affect, again we are in a more budget segment. So yeah this is just a very lovely looking solution for the enthusiast PC gamer at this price level.
Performance & tweaking
The overall performance in combo with the MSI Z170A SLI PLUS motherboard as such I'd rate as "good" for a quad core Core i7 6700K and good for the Core i5 6600K. Temps remain reasonable at default clocks, temperatures when the CPU is overclocked with added voltage definitely seem to be a notch better opposed to Haswell but still can rise fast and hot. Depending at your CPU you can clock these Skylake processors anywhere from 4.6 to 5.0 GHz depending on a bit of luck. At such a high you will need a lot of voltage, 1.40 maybe passing 1.50 volts when you reach the 5 Ghz barrier on your processor.
The bottom line
The Z170A SLI PLUS motherboard from MSI is a hit within its price segment really, for 150~160 buck (both USD and EURO) it offers a great performance motherboard with decent features versus good looks. I do miss AC WIFI, but other than that within this price range, really we cannot complain the slightest bit even.
Aesthetically a good looking motherboard that you can easily match with dark components. All things combined make this a nice looking piece of hardware with proper USB connectivity, an Intel Gigabit jack and very decent tweaking options that make this a good choice if you are on a more limited budget or simply refuse to pay too much money for an enthusiast class motherboard. Any XMP 2.0 enabled DDR4 memory can be easily configured by enabling the profile in the BIOS. You will gain excellent features combined with seriously nice performance and very decent energy consumption levels. I have no doubt that some of you can reach 4.8 ~ 5 GHz on this CPU, the MSI motherboard will certainly allow for this. The overall combination of the motherboard with a Core i5 6600K or Core i7 6700K will be impressive. As such the product at roughly a 150 bucks comes in as tremendously good value.
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