MSI Z170I Gaming Pro AC Review

Performance Analysis

Results at stock speed were fairly mid-table and where things slipped further it was only by marginal amounts. It came last in Total War: Atilla, where it was noticeably slower than the fastest result, but this still equated to less than 10 percent, or just 4fps. The SATA 6Gbps performance was also lacking, with read and write speeds of 515MB/sec and 479MB/sec some way off what we'd expect - usually around 525MB/sec and 500MB/sec respectively.


The overclock was 100-200MHz slower than most of the other boards on test so unsurprisingly this yielded some of the slower results here too. However, it managed to keep up in areas where the close proximity of the components on the PCB usually aids mini-ITX boards in our benchmarks - namely photo editing and gaming - and, sure enough, both it and the Asus Z170i Pro Gaming scored highly in Unigine Valley and 3DMark Fire Strike's overall score.


Audio performance was nearly identical to the other two MSI boards we've tested and indeed to most of the rest of the field, as well as Asus's Xonar DGX 5.1 sound card, so it's clear the audio will satisfy most of us - unless you're used to a premium sound card that retails for over £100, it's unlikely you'll be disappointed.

Conclusion

The Z170I Gaming Pro AC is a bit of a mixed bag, but does have some redeeming features. It looks great, sports an attractive and easy-to-use EFI and is easy to overclock. The onboard audio is on-par with most of the best Z170 boards we've seen and the PCB doesn't yield any major issues with layout.

However, the main problems are the lack of both a full-length M.2 port, which means you won't be able to use some of the fast M.2 SSDs out there, including Samsung's SSD 950 PRO, and USB 3.1. These are two of the latest technologies likely to compel users into a Z170 upgrade, so this is a shame. It's also not the best overclocker, with 4.6GHz being the limit no matter which overclocking method we tried - most other boards hit 4.8GHz but this seems to be a weak spot for MSI at the moment. The MSI Z170A Gaming M5 performed similarly and only the super-expensive Z170A XPOWER Gaming Titanium Edition managed to hit the magic 4.8GHz number.

However, if super-fast M.2 SSDs and sky-high overclocks aren't what you're looking for, then there's little else to dislike. The price is a little high compared to the competition but with such limited availability at the moment of all Z170 mini-ITX boards, it's tricky to draw any solid conclusions here at present. In short then, the MSI Z170I Gaming Pro AC is a solid effort in many regards, but a few niggles prevent it wowing us enough to receive an award.