Gadgetory

hey welcome back to harbor unboxed today i have the new MSI's dead 270 gaming m7 motherboard on hand and I'm pretty excited about it because this is my first msi 200 series motherboard and it looks to be a real weapon part of the excitement is down to the fact that the msi is dead 170 a gaming m7 just so happen to be one of the best value high-end is ed 170 motherboards I laid my hands on back in its heyday this said 170 motherboard retailed for I believe was around 210 u.s. or 320 ozzie and the now updated then 270 version is selling for 240 US or 400 Ozzy making it a good bit more expensive well when compared to the previous model you do get quite a lot of extras the CPU and ddr4 memory now features a digital PWM there is an extra m2 slot AS media lightning USB 3.1 7 controllable sound headers compared to the previous two upgraded audio and u2 connectivity there are other upgrades as well so let's get on with it like all new motherboards priced over $150 u.s. this thing has enough RGB LED lights to put your Christmas tree to shame there pretty much everywhere and unfortunately though a lot of this aesthetic goodness I feel comes at the expense of performance take the 11 phase power solution for example like most motherboards the power delivery system is cool via large passive heat sinks to ensure optimal operating temperatures under full load that's great in MSI's military class 5 implementation features fancy-pants titanium chokes dark caps and all that good stuff however the issue I have with this implementation is that those nice big passive heat sinks designed to keep the power delivery stuff cool even when overclocking has been covered or almost insulated in plastic these passive heat sinks rely on air movement generated by case fans to keep them cool covering their entire surface area and plastic seems somewhat counterproductive it's a bit disappointing to see form take priority of a function here and especially on such a high-end motherboard I decided to check how much of an impact the plastic shroud had on thermal performance with a 120 millimeter fan blowing air over the motherboard the heatsink covering the reach a temperature of 46 degrees Celsius this temperature is recorded using a non-contact infrared thermometer the core i5 7600 K processor was also overclocked to four point eight gigahertz and placed on the full load during this test so honestly a heat sink temperature of 46 degrees isn't exactly extreme I also measured the top of the titanium chokes at 40 degrees removing the plastic shroud and retesting so the heat sink temperature 40 degrees the chokes also drop from 40 degrees down to 37 degrees these are fairly significant temperatures despite the fact that with the shroud installed I wouldn't have called the original figures dangerous still the point of these high end enthusiast grade motherboards is that they come with the very best components that are meant to offer greater efficiency and therefore crucially lower operating temperatures so again covering them plastic seems to go against everything this boards cancel thankfully the heatsink cooling the said 270 chip isn't also covered in plastic and instead MSI has gone with an aluminium shroud to house the LED lighting here and the maximum system load this heatsink reaches 34 degrees by the way for those wondering the ambient room temperature was just 21 degrees during his testing so the plastic shroud could become a bigger issue in warmer climates the last of the RGB LED madness can be found around the PCI expansion slots here MSI has instilled what they call matching gaming i/o and audio cover with RGB LEDs the blinky doesn't seem to be hurting anyone so I don't have a problem with this light show an interesting feature that upon first inspection I thought hey that's pretty cool is MSI's m2 shield MSI advertise this is a device for keeping your m2 SSD cool while also protecting it MSI says that and I quote the m2 shield features cooling pads to lower the temperature of your m2 device and avoid any possible throttling causing it to slow down sounds simple enough and it sounds pretty good however there are a few glaring issues here firstly the heat shield as they call it only makes contact with the top side of the SSD so for double-sided m2 SSD C's isn't particularly useful though admittedly the controller is usually found on the top side the included thermal pad appears woefully insufficient and it's at this point you realize this might be more gimmick than anything else we're still luscious locks Steve over at gamers Nexus looked into the m2 shield and did some really nice testing he found that it actually increases the operating temperature of MDOT two drives so it seems like the m2 shield might just trap heat and limit the air flow to your SSD so that's unfortunate after speaking with msi about this issue they insisted that their internal testing shows improved SSD thermals and they were quick to point out that other reviews such as the one over a bit tech also found significant temperature improvements with the m2 shield in fact bit tech reported a 10 degree lower operating tempo on their Samsung SSD 960 Evo with the shield installed and that's pretty amazing so with that I had to look into this further since bit Tech used the Samsung SSD 960 Evo 500 gigabyte I thought I might as well do the same on an open-air chest there with no direct airflow so we are relying purely on natural convection without the shield installed the Evo got us hot at 71 degrees with the shield installed we sadly didn't see temperatures drop by 10 degrees rather just a single degree still it didn't make the SSD hotter like the gamers Nexus results suggested that said I ran a second test inside a computer case with a fan directing air flow past the graphics card and this was sending some cool air the 960 gyros Way operating temperatures were reduced significantly the SSD was now peaking at just 47 degrees with the shield removed installing the shield under the same conditions actually increase the operating temperature to 49 degrees a two degree increase and this is similar to what Steve over at gammas Nexus or so it seems when there is little to no airflow the M 2 shield might be useful or at least it doesn't hurt however with a small amount of airflow the M 2 shield seems to hurt thermal performance if only slightly ok so I'll admit this is all sounding a bit negative so far but that's because I'm waiting to get to the good stuff which thankfully is pretty much everything else with the M 2 shields being a bit of a bust I recommend removing it which thankfully can be done quickly and easily in total there are three m2 ports all offering pcie 3.0 times for bandwidth the first flight situated up the primary PCIe x 16 slot supports up to 110 millimeter long and got 2 devices while the following two ports will accept up to 80 millimeter long apart from the 3m to swatch you get the standard 6 SATA 6 gigabits per second ports along with a u2 connector MSI has wrapped this connector with their steel armor which is meant to increase durability and reduce interference it probably doesn't hurt that it looks kind of cool as well anyway this connector should come in handy for those connecting next-generation SSDs as it delivers up to 32 gigabits per second of bandwidth per device moving on from storage to audio we find MSI's audio boost solution whereas asrock employs creative Sound Blaster cinema 3 software MSI is going with nahee mix audio software cinema 3 worked well when I tested the asrock fatalities at 270 gaming ITX motherboard so I was keen to see how no hemic 2 compared sadly I never got the chance the software simply wouldn't install although the audio was working and the latest real tech drivers were installed as an anemic software install failed claiming that the realtek audio driver must be installed first so following a tutorial in the new hemic forums are used in uninstaller from iobit and removed the real tech drivers then after rebooting installing the real tech audio drivers supplied by MSI I tried again unfortunately this was to no avail as I ran into the same error once again at this point I tried a few other things before giving up and moving on it seems I'm not alone here either heaps of MSI users are reporting trouble getting their software installed there is also a concerning amount of users who have successfully installed the software but climate causes our games to crash so for now this doesn't look great for the no hemic to software and I'll have to look into this a bit later moving past that disappoint we find that like as rocks higher ends at 270 motherboards MSO has isolated the audio Hardware on a separate section of the PCB to avoid interference they've also placed the left and right audio channels on a separate layer to reduce crosstalk something rather unique and very odd about MSI audio implementation is the fact that it employs not one but two Realtek a LC 1220 codecs moreover each audio codec receive its own dedicated amplifier so why is MSI dumbness as far as I can tell this has been done so that the user can simultaneously use their speakers and headphones which is kind of cool when it comes to USB 3 connectivity these n270 gaming m7 delivers the i/o panel supports a pair of USB 3 point one Jen to parts a type a and type C port along with a pair of Jen ones I've a ports for legacy support MSI has included three rinky-dinky USB 2.0 ports as well meanwhile I on board has it's possible to add another four USB 2.0 ports two USB 3.1 ports and a single Gen 2 3.1 type C port I should note this board doesn't use an Intel Thunderbolt controller so sunder bolts three support doesn't exist even MSI's USB implementation gets a special touch up from the marketing guys the two USB 3.1 gen2 on type a ports featured below the Gigabit Ethernet port of V are ready we are ready USB ports okay I'm starting to get dizzy at this point connected to the USB port is the VR boost chip msi claims that traditional USB ports can suffer signal drops significantly impacting the performance of connected devices msi also says that vr boosters are smart chip them ensures a clean and strong signal to the VR optimized USB ports giving you an enjoyable VR experience this is yet another feature we can't really test so I guess we'll just have to take their word for it also around the i/o panel we find a single ps2 port which we could happily drop in favor of some extra USB 3 ports there's a CMOS reset button DisplayPort and HDMI outputs gear bit Ethernet connection which is driven by a killer a 2500 controller and five audio jacks along with an optical audio output as well so that pretty much covers all the important features let's take a look at the UEFI BIOS for those of you wondering this is a single BIOS job using a 128 megabit american megatrends UEFI BIOS flash rom as we found when testing new asrock z2 70 motherboards msi has also gone with a very similar design layouts that are there's at 170 models also like the asrock boards MSI is now at an easy bias mode which probably isn't necessary on the enthusiast grade motherboard but we have it anyway skipping the easy bias mode lands us in the advanced bias and now we can get things done as you might have guessed all the real action takes place in the OC menu now we could just bump the CPU ratio up to 49 times and then add a little voltage like we did on a drop-dead 270 Mini ITX board but for this review let's try an msi feature called gain boost which is essentially automated overclocking game boos can be enabled at the BIOS level and typically this is how I prefer to do my overclocking but surprising this feature doesn't provide much information on what it's actually doing here for far better control and information it's best to install and use the msi command center within windows I have to admit while not a fan of overclocking and tweaking within the Windows operating system the msi command center is brilliant the level of control that it offers is impressive and users can Turing their CPU DRAM and even integrated graphics processor if they wish the game Bruce menu provides more detail on what it is that each setting does with the core i5 7600 K and still we have seven overclocking profiles that are oddly numbered anyway each one steps up the operating frequency by 100 megahertz my core i5 7600 K processor failed the set eleven option which would have seen it run at 4.9 gigahertz that said the set 10 option works fine and here the processors seem to operate it between 4.7 and 4.8 gigahertz depending on the load stability was excellent though temperatures were high as this setting applies one point 4 volts my 7600 Kage can run happily at 4.9 gigahertz using 1.3 volts so while the game Bruce feature does work well you are still best off fine-tuning the overclock complimenting the command center is the little MSI gaming app which can be used to overclock your MSI graphics card as well as tinker with the LED lights sadly the lighting options for the z2 70 gaming m7 are very basic which are seven color choices and some boring effects so the RGB lighting options and effects do leave quite a bit to be desired overall the MSI z2 70 gaming m7 is a great motherboard despite the few frustrating design flaws on that note I have to say the marketing gimmicks or jargon or whatever you want to call it have gotten out of hand have with the motherboard makers lately and only added bling these days has made it probably a bit harder to swallow or at least take them seriously but let me be clear I'm not singling MSI out here they all do it I guess I'm just disappointed that MSI has compromised on cooling to look cool I should point out though that asrock has also included some a plastic shroud stuff over there vrm heat sinks on the edge 270 extremes for and then 270 gaming k-6 boards though they haven't covered them entirely so there they are still getting a fair bit of airflow and on the higher end gaming k-6 model they have used heat pipe to join the heat sinks together which has improved the thermal performance actually it's interesting to think that ten years ago copper heat pipes are all the rage amongst motherboard makers I remember boards such as the asou speak a deluxe which were littered with heat pipes the older viewers models to remember a bit their IP 35 pro was another Intel P 35 motherboard with an interesting cooling stuff that took full advantage of heat pipes back in the day the heat pipe craze did get a little out of hand thanks to the marketing machine but for the most part they did help with thermal performance so enthusiasts welcome to them fast-forward to today and it's all about flashy lights honestly I don't really mind the RGB craze that much and I have to admit the MSI z2 70 gaming m7 is a very cool looking motherboard certainly one of the best I've seen I just wish the bling didn't come at the expense of cooling performance maybe I'm banging on about this too much the temperatures certainly never got out of hand and they didn't compromise the stability of our core i5 7600 overclock I guess I just like to see well refined designs with a highly optimized for thermal performance the m2 shield is another pointless gimmick but you can just use one of the other M 2 slots and leave it in place if you think it looks cool of course if you wish to install three m2 SSDs then you can simply remove the shield altogether so no hemic to software also looks a bit dicey at this point but I would have liked a chance to check it out for myself I will try to resolve this issue soon when I have a bit more time to spend troubleshooting it still even without the no hemic audio software installed I can confirm that the MSI z2 70 gaming m7 provides exceptional audio quality MSI zone software is excellent as particularly impressed with the command center they only let down here was again the LED lighting sadly there are just a few color options to choose from rather than entire spectrum of RGB colors with the exception of that plastic shroud I have to say the board design and layout is excellent the gaming m7 also offers a very solid feature set making it quite good value at the $240 u.s. or $400 of the asking price in a nutshell what I liked about MSI Z 270 gaming m7 was the appearance the dual audio codecs the 2 amp liquid cooling pump out all the steel armor bits they were nice the Triple M to support the you to connectivity the abundance of USB 3.1 port and that front panel USB 3.1 type C headers nice the automated game boost overclocking and MSI's commands and a software right so I'm going to end this review here please let me know what you guys think about MSI Zed 270 gaming m7 as always I'm very keen to hear your thoughts and I'm particularly interested what you make of that plastic shroud is it not really a big deal and you prefer the lighting or is it something that needs to go I'm your host Steve and I'll catch you on the next one you you