MSI Z170A Gaming M5 Review

Performance Analysis

Speed-wise, there's very little in it at stock speed and whether you're focussing on gaming, photo editing or rendering performance, there's little we found to suggest the Z170A Gaming M5 is slower here than anything else we've tested - certainly no issues to report. As per usual, the gaming performance differed little between boards although in our new 3DMark Firestrike test, the Asus Maximus VIII Hero, which we're currently testing, was a little faster.

The 200MHz deficit in clock speed once overclocked didn't land the Z170A Gaming M5 in too much hot water either. The Cinebench and Terragen 3 rendering tests were the most telling here, but even then the difference was slight. You'll be using more power for lesser overclocks compared to something like the Maximus VIII Gene though, as it managed 4.8GHz with a lower vcore of 1.31V (except loadline calibration was set to maximum). This was enough to see a 14W decrease in overclocked load power consumption.

Storage performance was right on the money both in terms of SATA 6Gbps and M.2, making the most of our Kingston HyperX Predator M.2 drive too with a read speed of 1,368MB/sec. MSI has offered consistently solid audio performance recently too, and while it was a little behind the likes of the Asus Z170-Deluxe, it came a very close second in the dynamic range and noise level tests. THD was higher but we've seen a lot higher in testing on other platforms.

Conclusion

It's a shame the latest EFI seemed to hamper overclocking, but unless you're looking for an every day overclock of 4.6GHz or over, or want to use the Z170A Gaming M5 to benchmark, then something in the region of 4.3-4.5GHz is perfectly achievable with reasonable voltages. Coupled with a good EFI, getting there is very easy too and the Z170A Gaming M5 has lots more features besides, both software and hardware-based.

The £10 price drop has improved its prospects too. Had it cost £150 as it did at launch, this would have seen it edging towards competing with the likes of the the Asus Maximus VIII Gene and Hero, both of which are much better-equipped feature wise. At £140, the Z170A Gaming M5 is one of the more affordable Z170 boards out there. However, the lack of power, reset and CMOS clear buttons is a tad disappointing and the audio is good but not stellar. Apart from the dual M.2 ports, there isn't a whole lot here compared to many £120-130 Z170 boards out there, which we suspect is why MSI felt the need to drop the price. As it stands, the Z170A Gaming M5 is a good effort, but we'd sooner see it ditch the LED POST code display, voltage readout points and second M.2 port for a more competitive price tag. Unless you need to RAID two speedy M.2 SSDs, there are definitely cheaper options.