MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC Review

Overclocking

There's been quite a bit of variation in terms of overclocking with Z370 boards so far as manufacturers get to grips with Coffee Lake. Gigabyte often requires loadline calibration for a stable voltage lower than 1.3V, while MSI's Z370 Godlike Gaming managed to get to the magic 5GHz figure too with our Core i7-8700K with 1.285V. The Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC required a similar voltage at 1.28V, but this didn't result in the highest power draw.

We've covered MSI's current EFI and software in depth in a recent article which you can see here.

Performance Analysis

Audio performance was excellent compared to the rest of the field, albeit with a blip in the THD. Still, the noise and dynamic range levels as reported by RightMark Audio Analyzer topped the charts, although in the real world you're unlikely to notice much difference. The SATA and M.2 speeds were on the money despite some of the higher test temperatures for the latter that we suspect are down to the location of the M.2 port.

There's very little difference between boards in raw performance numbers, but the relatively high stock speed load power draw might explain the fact the board topped the PCMark and Terragen results with a clear lead in PCMark especially, but this was the only stand-out figure, and again it's unlikely to mean much in the real world.

Conclusion

Prices are already fluctuating with Z370 so coming to a firm conclusion now is perhaps a little pointless if you're reading this article a few weeks after it was published. For example, the Z370 Godlike Gaming has seen a massive £120 price cut, although admittedly it did cost an eye-watering £530 to start with. The Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC currently retails for £182, which is around £20 cheaper than when we received the board a week or two ago, so it's improved in our eyes even as we've been testing it. As a result, it now undercuts the Asus ROG Strix Z370-E Gaming by around £25, yet it still manages to offer Wi-Fi, RGB lighting, and a similar feature set to the Asus board as well as an EFI that's on par too and even better in some areas such as fan control. The Asus board is perhaps a tad more attractive and has better M.2 cooling, but these are the only areas it holds an advantage. As a result, the MSI board offers much better value and is our current favourite Z370 board for around £180.