MSI Z170A Gaming M5 Motherboard Overview
Taking a first look at the motherboard we can see that MSI is sticking with their same black and red color design that they have been using on the gaming series. So you have an all black PCB with black and red heatsinks. The MSI Z170A Gaming M5 is an ATX motherboard.
Starting at the CPU socket this board of course features the LGA1151 socket which supports Intel’s latest 6th generation Skylake processors. Power to the CPU comes by way of an 8-pin EPS connector that is located at the top of the board. The board features a 12 phase all digital power design that makes use of MSI’s Military Class 5 components, most notably the Titanium chokes. The power delivery components are covered by two separate heatsinks. The CPU fan header is located towards the top of the board to the right of the CPU socket.
Moving over to the side of the board we have four DDR4 DIMM slots. These are dual-channel slots, but they are not color-coded. This motherboard supports DDR4 memory up to 3600 MHz (OC). At the top corner of the board you will find the optional CPU fan header or the CPU fan 2 header. Moving down there is a 4-pin system fan header and the 24-pin ATX power connection.
Coming down the board we have our storage connections at a 90 degree angle so they do not get in the way of your graphics cards. You have two SATA Express ports and two SATA 6GB/s ports. Keep in mind if you don’t plan on using the SATA Express ports that opens up four more SATA 6GB/s ports, giving you a total of 6. There is also a USB 3.0 header that is set at a 90 degree angle as well.
Along the bottom of the board is where you are going to find the rest of your headers and connections. First we have the debug or post-code display. This will also display live CPU temperatures once your system has booted. From right to left along the bottom of the board we have our front panel headers, two USB 2.0 ports, COM port header, TPM header, Thunderbolt header, slow mode switch, a 4-pin fan header, and HD audio header.
Along the far edge of the motherboard we have MSI’s Audio Boost 3 audio solution which is powered by the Nahimic Audio Enhancer. With that you have an isolated audio PCB, metal EMI shielding, dual OPA1652 AMPs, and Nippon Chemi-con audio capacitors.
When it comes to expansion slots there are three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (x16/x8x8/x8x8x4) and four PCI-Express 3.0 x1 slots. This board has 2-way NVIDIA SLI support and 3-way AMD CrossFireX support. You can also see that the top two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots are steel reinforced, this not only looks great, but adds stability. Above the top PCI-Express slot and in-between the two other PCI-Express x16 slots are M.2 slots. These both are 32 Gb/s PCI-Express 3.0 x4 slots. Also above the top PCI-Express slot is another 4-pin fan header giving you a total of three not including the two CPU fan headers.
Finally on to the rear I/O from left to right we have a PS/2 port, two USB 2.0 ports, DVI, two USB 3.1 (Type-A and Type-C), HDMI, four USB 3.0 ports, Killer E4200 Gigabit Ethernet, and gold-plated audio connections. The Killer Ethernet port features 15KV anti-surge protection, which is higher than the typical 8KV we see from other vendors.
