Connectors and I/O

In total, MSI equipped the Z170A Gaming M7 motherboard with six SATA 6Gbps connectors, which have all been natively wired to the PCH. This means you get six native SATA-III ports, whereas four can be combined to two SATA Express connectors. On top of the first PCIe x16 slot there is the first M.2 x4 Gen 3 slot and above the third full size PCIe slot, there is the second M.2 x4 Gen 3 slot. With this motherboard you get three PCIe x16 Gen 3.0 and four PCIe x1 Gen 3.0 slots and all of them have been painted black. The First two PCIe x16 slots receive metal reinforcement. From top to bottom for the PCIe 16x slots have been wired using 16 lanes, 8 lanes and 8 lanes. This means you can do 8x/8x SLI/CrossFire and 8x/8x/4x CrossFireX (3-way). Basically these are the standard options you get with any Intel's Z170 based motherboard, that does not feature a PLX chip. The placement of the PCIe connectors has been well thought. Something that is almost standard nowadays with premium motherboards are the practical onboard power- and reset-buttons as well as a debug LED. MSI also added some extra stuff like two physical BIOS chips and an OC Genie button.
The BIOS can be cleared by removing the battery or simply by pushing the clr_CMOS button located in the back panel.

The MSI Z170A Gaming M7 motherboard features a total of five fan headers, which is enough to provide a normal gaming rig with enough of fresh air. A closer look at the pictures below shows where they have been placed. All five fan headers feature 4 pins and support PWM functionality. Therefore it's possible to control fan speeds from within Windows as well as the BIOS.

Looking at the external connectors placed directly at the I/O-panel, MSI equipped the new Z170A Gaming M7 motherboard with a P/S2 connector, four USB 3.1 ports (1 Type-C connector), three USB 2.0 ports (one Hotkey + BIOS Flashback port) one Gigabit Ethernet port, two HDMI and a DisplayPort output, a CLR_CMOS button as well as an optical out and the analogue audio panel.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 14 - SiSoft Sandra 2
Page 2 - Specs and Delivery	Page 15 - UC Bench
Page 3 - Features	Page 16 - Super Pi 1M / 32M
Page 4 - Layout	Page 17 - wPrime 1024M Multi Core
Page 5 - Connectors and I/O	Page 18 - Cinebench
Page 6 - BIOS	Page 19 - Tomb Raider
Page 7 - Test setup	Page 20 - Metro Last Light
Page 8 - Preview / Gallery	Page 21 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 9 - 3D Mark	Page 22 - Power Consumption
Page 10 - 3D Mark 11	Page 23 - Performance Rating
Page 11 - 3D Mark Vantage	Page 24 - Price Comparison
Page 12 - PC Mark 8	Page 25 - Conclusion
Page 13 - SiSoft Sandra 1