MSI

Unlike Asus and Gigabyte, MSI's launch range is a little more restricted with no firm details on micro-ATX or mini-ITX offerings other than the fact they will be called the Z370M Gaming Pro AC, Z370M Mortar, and Z370I Gaming Pro Carbon AC. Most of the software and EFIs are the same or very similar to those we saw at the X299 launch too. However, the company has detailed a few changes with Z370. Firstly, power phases have been increased on many boards with its all-digital PWM design to cater for the new six-core CPUs, which it claims should mean better overclocking. Its Game Boost feature now supports overclocking profiles that reach up to 5.4GHz using the Core i7-8700K and that will top 4.7GHz with the Core i3-8350K.

All MSI Z370 motherboards will include RGB LED headers, but MSI is introducing a new header called Rainbow. This will allow you to control individual LEDs on a strip and not just apply lighting effects or all-strip colours. There's also a dedicated header that supports Corsair Link products.

One addition that was introduced recently and was slightly annoying was the need to reboot from the EFI in order to access the BIOS flash menu. It didn't used to be like this, and indeed on most other boards you don't need to reboot, so MSI has introduced the ability to press CTRL + F5 to update the BIOS from within the EFI instead.

We'll be starting our Coffee Lake and Z370 coverage properly on 5th October, so make sure you tune back in then - we have CPU, motherboard, and system reviews all coming your way.