MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon Review
Category : Z370
Published by Marc Büchel on 02.01.18
With the Gaming Pro Carbon, MSI has a well equipped mid-range motherboard in its portfolio, which comes with a bunch of interesting features. There are for example two M.2 Gen 3 x4 slots as well as a good looking design. Apart from that this model should feature a rather interesting price.
Already at launch MSI had a complete portfolio of Z370 motherboards. With the Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC MSI offers a budget gaming motherboard suitable for building an affordable gaming PC. Altough this is not going to be an expensive board, there are quite a few features which you can find also on higher-end models. From a design point of view there is a black color scheme and carbon-like looking stickers have been put on the heatsinks.
Specs and Delivery
| Chipset | Intel Z370 |
| Memory | Dual Channel DDR4, 4 x DIMM, Max. 64 GB DDR4, 4000 OC, Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory |
| Multi-GPU |
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| Slots |
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| Audio | Realtek ALC1220
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| Storage | Intel Z370 chipset
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| Network |
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| Internal Connectors |
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| Extrenal Connectors |
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| Forfactor | ATX (30.5cm x 24.4cm) |
| BIOS | 1 x 64Mb flash ROM, UEFI AMI BIOS |
Features
Military Class 5 Components |
Since years MSI has been using digital power designs. On this board we find the latest 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. |
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MSI Steel Armor |
There are two full-sized PCIe slots on this particular board, which have 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 slots 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 increasing 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. |  |
Audio Boost 4 |
MSI equips this motherboard with an improved audio solution which includes a Realtek ALC1220 audio codec and dual headphone amplifier. At the I/O shield we find gold-plated audio jacks which help in improving the signal quality. Furthermore there are high quality capacitors from nichicon and audio implementation has been separated from the rest of the PCB. Last but not least there is even a special USB port, to which best to connect a DAC, thanks to cleaner and more stable voltage supply. |  |
M.2 Support |
The Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC motherboard from MSI features two M.2 slots which are placed between the PCIe slots. This motherboard can be equipped with one 2280 M.2 and one 22110 M.2 SSDs, where the figures behind the "22" stand for the actual length of the M.2 SSD in millimeter. Both slots are connected via four PCIe x4 lanes, offering up to 32 Gbps bandwidth. The bottom slot features a MSI M.2 Shield which also acts as a heatsink in order to prevent any throttling issues. |  |
Layout
As we've already mentioned in the introduction the MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC motherboard comes with a great looking design. The PCB has a matte black finish and the heatsinks feature carbon-like looking covers. Apart from that the PCH received RGB backlight. The heatsinks have been shaped nicely and the whole product is really good looking. The layout has been well thought and there are plenty of useful features, like two headers to attach external USB 3.0 ports, six SATA 6Gbps ports (two straight) and two M.2 Gen 3 x4 slots. In addtion there is a plastic cover on the I/O ports.
The MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC comes with a digital 10 phase power design regarding the CPU. The CPU power design, which is controlled by an uP9508Q dual-loop multi-phase buck controller, which has 5 output phases. Each phase controller is being doubled by an uP1961S from uPI Semiconductor. Unfortunately we can't find any details on this chip. Furthermore there are 12 NTMFS4C024N and 10 NTMFS4C029N MOSFETs on the high- and low- side.
This board has been equipped with a total of four DIMM-slots. Officially supported is everything up to DDR4 4000 (O.C.). 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 heatsink for the current converters are made from two aluminium blocks which are not linked with additional heatpipe. The PCH heatsinks are all quite simple and flat. The cooling blocks have been very well made and also they are perfetcly attached to the board to provide enough pressure on the components they have to cool. The aluminium blocks are entirely black with grey sheet metal covers, overall resembling a completly new design.
Connectors and I/O
In total, MSI equipped the Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC motherboard with six SATA 6Gbps connectors, which have all been natively wired to the PCH and two of them are straight and not angled. Above the first PCIe x16 slot there is the first M.2 slot and on top of 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 three PCIe x1 Gen 3.0 slots and all of them have been painted black, while the first two of them received metal reinforcements. From top to bottom the full-sized PCIe slots have been wired using 16 lanes, 8 lanes and 8 lanes. This means you can build 16x/8x SLI/CrossFire and 8x/8x/8x CrossFireX (3-way). These are basically the standard options you get with any Intel Z370 based motherboard, that does not feature a PLX chip. The placement of the PCIe slots has been well-thought. Unfortunately there are no practical onboard power- and reset-buttons on this board but at least there are few diagnostic LEDs that can help in the case of a failure.
The MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC motherboard features a total of six fan headers, which is enough to provide a normal gaming rig with enough fresh air. A closer look at the pictures below shows where they have been placed. All six fan headers feature 4-pin and support PWM functionality. Therefore it's possible to control fan speeds from within Windows as well as the BIOS.
Connectors
- 1 x PS/2 keyboard/ mouse combo port
- 2 x USB 2.0 Type-A ports
- 1 x DisplayPort port
- 1 x USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A port
- 1 x USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port
- 4 x USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A ports
- 1 x HDMI port
- 1 x LAN (RJ45) port
- 5 x OFC audio jacks
- 1 x Optical S/PDIF OUT connector
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 |
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| Motherboard |
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| 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 |
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| Power supply | Seasonic X-650 |
| OS | Windows 10 x64 Updated |
Preview / Gallery
| Product Picture | Link to Gallery |
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ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero |
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ASUS ROG STRIX Z370-I Gaming |
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MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC |
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 |
| ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero | |
| ASUS ROG STRIX Z370-I Gaming | |
| MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC |
Conclusion
| General | + | - | |
| It's quite obvious that the MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC 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 a carbon-like look based on a black PCB. Apart from that there are features like two M.2 slots, several 4-pin PWM header and a decent audio solution. The MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC is currently listed on Geizhals for 163 Euro, which is perfectly reasonable considering the feature list. | -
Design - Layout - Features - 2 x M.2 x4 Slot |
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| Layout | + | - | |
| The layout of the MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC has been well thought. This model features four angled SATA connectors and two straight SATA ports, which can be found in the bottom right corner. Since the Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC 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 two of them are being equipped with metal reinforcement plates. There is a total of three full sized PCI Express slots and three PCIe x1 slots. This means that there is plenty of space for graphics cards in multi GPU setups to breathe. In addition there are two M.2 slots. | - Space around the CPU
socket
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- No power/reset-button onboard | |
| Performance | + | - | |
At the moment our test setup includes three motherboards but during next weeks we will add more models. Calculating the average of all benchmarks results we ran, we see that this board scores 3rd. If we check a bit closer, we see that the MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC is about 2,8% slower than the ROG STRIX Z370-I Gaming in 3D Mark benchmarks. Furthermore, speaking about 2D performance, we see a good result for the MSI motherboard in SuperPI 1M. On another note, we had at energy efficiency where this board scores 3rd. |
- 2D Performance |
- Power consumption | |
| 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. Apart from that overclocking our test CPU to 5 GHz was straight forward and there were no issues whatsoever. | - Sheer amount of
options - Design |
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| Recommendation | + | - | |
| The MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC is a well equipped Z370 motherboard. At the moment this board isn't so quick according to our 2D and 3D benchmarks. We expect a better BIOS from MSI that can improve the overall performance of this motherboard. On top of that it comes with a decent feature set and a price of 163 Euro excluding shipping costs, which makes it definitely affordable. | |||
| Rating | |||
| We give the MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC excellent 4 out of 5 stars. | |||
