With Intel slowly turning their cogs and rolling out the unlocked desktop versions of their Skylake CPUs, its yet another time to start considering if that Sandy Bridge motherboard just needs to have its last day. With Skylake comes the not so discrete push towards DDR4 exclusive memory too, with many LGA 1151 motherboards not supporting the slower standard that has been as such for so many years now. And while the MSI Z170A Gaming M5 motherboard makes a compelling argument to upgrade, it’s somewhat held back by technology boasting well above its weight.

Gaming motherboards in general are slated heavily for their use of a marketing suffix to drive the price sky high while offer little to no benefit over traditional motherboards. While that idea has stagnated a bit in recent times, the prejudice still exists – but that doesn’t seem to phase MSI. The Z170A M5 is a gaming motherboard through and through, looking the part with the familiar, yet striking, red and black coating that dominates the board. An elevated heat sink near the CPU slot stands out, while the MSI Dragon Logo is emblazoned on the board to make sure no one mistakes where it comes from. The board looks lovely in a case bearing a similar colour scheme, even if it’s not a departure from previous boards.

MSI Z170A M5 Gaming Review 2

Looks aren’t everything, and the Z170A M5 understand that. Along with the eye catching design, the board features three PCIe x16 slots, with an additional four slots for your DDR4 memory up, supporting speeds of up to 3600MHz. Storage is also given a good look, with some next-generation offerings. There’s dual M.2 slots with four lanes of PCIe Gen3 each, along with two SATA Express ports and another two USB 3.1 ports – both Type A and C. Those PCIe slots are put to good use too, with the Z170A offering enough space and functionality for a single Nvidia SLI setup, and more then enough for a Tri-CrossFire AMD setup should you be so inclined.

Look at the back of the board, and you’ll see a pleasant host of ports for you to use to your hearts content. If you’re forgoing a dedicated graphics cards and want to just make use of Intel’s integrated power, you’ve got an on-board HDMI and DisplayPort slot to pick from depending on your preference. That’s on top of four USB 3.0 ports, two USB 3.1 ports and another two USB 2.0 ports nestled neatly but confusingly altogether.

MSI Z170A M5 Gaming Review 3

Two notable inclusions accompany the standard Ethernet Port and Auxiliary Outputs. Going for a less conventional Ethernet chip, MSI has chosen the Killer E2400, which comes with some integrated traffic prioritisation software that is meant to decrease in-game pings. Although I never saw a noticeable difference, the card itself was fast and reliable – with some good software to boot. Audio options are supported by the Audio Boost 3 chip, which has a regular Realtek Codec hidden beneath. It’s still a far cry from a dedicated sound card, but for a change the auxiliary output wasn’t riddled with a mess of static and noise. That, and there’s an optical output too which is fairly useful for surround sound setups that don’t utilise HDMI.

But the real star of the Z170A M5 only shows itself when you boot it for the first time. Once a confusing mess of options, a good BIOS menu can now set apart terrible boards from really good ones – especially when it comes down to performing complex overclocks at the push of a button. The BIOS here is quick and easy to navigate, allowing you to set clock multipliers, boot priorities and easy overclocking setups from the homescreen alone. It offers options to get down to the nitty gritty of CPU voltages, RAM speeds and more, or stay simple enough for the casual PC player to get extra juice out of their parts in a stable environment.

MSI Z170A M5 Gaming Review 4

Setting up the Z170A M5 with a Core i7-6700K and 8GB of DDR4 2400 memory, as well as swapping between preset settings and Game Boost modes in the BIOS, we set out to test just how much of a difference the gaming label actually made. Considering it’s a faster processor (and has faster memory) than our stock testing bench, the scores have a massive gap between them, but still reveal an interesting story.

CinebenchR15 CPU Test (higher is better)

MSI Z170A M5 Cinebench Test

CinebenchR15 renders pieces of an image at different times and records a CPU score based on how quickly it completes. It’s easy to see how the new Skylake processor excels past last-gen Haswell, but the 0.4GHz overclock that the Game Boost provides on the CPU (stable, but only the CPU clock is changed) shows a small performance gain. The Z107A manages to stabilise at this frequency, but the Skylake gains are minimal.

wPrime 1024MB CPU Test (Lower is better)

MSI Z170A M5 wPrime 1024MB Test

More confusing is the wPrime 1024MB test, which again stresses the CPU. Here, a lower times means faster processing, and surprisingly it’s the old Haswell chip that is miles ahead of the Skylake. Whether down to the CPU or the way the motherboard is utilising it, the MSI Z170A can’t even get close – even when overclocked by Game Boost.

AIDA64 Extreme Memory Test (Higher is better)

MSI Z170A M5 AIDA 64 Test

AIDA64 is all about memory speeds, and it’s here where the Z170A shines. The DDR4 memory coupled with next-generation SATA connections boost Read, Write and Copy time well above anything a Z97 board could possibly dream of. Curiously, the slight overclock that Game Boost provides actually marginally slows down these speeds – again with the settings only touching the CPU clock and steering clear of memory speeds.

Futuremark FireStrike Benchmark (Higher is better)

MSI Z170A M5 Futuremark Benchmark

Futuremark gives us the best environment to test actual 3D performance, and it’s clear here how much faster the Skylake chip is in terms of raw processing. The small overclock that Game Boost provides also bumps up the score nicely, although it’s again a bit smaller than nearly half a gigahertz should probably be getting you. Sadly, it seems Skylake integrated graphics technology is near identical to Haswell – with the scores being negligible at best.

So oddly enough, it seems that the Z170A M5 doesn’t falter in providing a stable overclock at the press of a button, which is more than most gaming plastered motherboards can say. However, the actual gains vary wildly – and it’s likely that Skylake architecture is at fault here. Nothing suggests this more than the wPrime test, which show a notable decrease in speed despite the faster clock speeds. The motherboard is showing there’s a performance gain, but the overall standings being slower than Haswell is just poor.

MSI Z170A M5 Gaming Review 5

Still, the memory speeds are staggeringly fast, and that’s without touching any overclocking settings at all. It is a bit disappointing that the in-built overclock feature doesn’t do this automatically, but the deep and varied BIOS settings will allow the more technically savvy to mess with this to their heart’s content. There’s a lot on offer here, and the price suggests it. The Z170A M5 Gaming rings in at R3599.00, putting it a little above mid-range motherboards and into more enthusiast territory.

It has the features to back it up, but the buy-in isn’t cheap. Requiring expensive DDR4 memory and and Skylake CPU, there’s a hefty investment required that could be alleviated by a more modest motherboard. However, if you’re looking for moderate performance gains at the press of a button (and an even deeper toolset of benchmarking options for those comfortable with them), the Z170A M5 Gaming is a strong choice if you’re in the market for an upgrade.

 

Last Updated: September 21, 2015

MSI Z170A M5 Gaming board
The Z170A M5 Gaming is an enthusiast motherboard with the features to match, providing the best BIOS experience on the market at the moment with some next-generation storage speeds. Still, the immense buy-in could encourage more modest motherboard choices, while some the one-click overclock could’ve been a far deeper optimisation than a simple CPU clock multiplication.
8
MSI Z170A M5 Gaming board was reviewed on PC

27 Comments

  1. Nice write-up Sandy, good looking mobo

    Reply

    • Pariah

      September 21, 2015 at 15:43

      You think Sandy is a good looking mobo? Explains a lot.

      Also *mofo

      Reply

      • Commander JJ of the Normandy

        September 21, 2015 at 15:44

        XD

        Reply

      • Alessandro Barbosa

        September 21, 2015 at 15:45

        Pulling…it…off 😛

        Reply

        • Grand Admiral Chief

          September 21, 2015 at 15:52

          At least you are not pulling out

          OK THAT’S ENOUGH INTERNET FOR TODAY!

          Reply

          • Pariah

            September 21, 2015 at 15:53

            Yoh. What a way to finish things off…

            *drops mic*

          • Alien Emperor Trevor

            September 21, 2015 at 16:03

            Not really. Pulling out doesn’t work, so while you think it might be over now, 9 months later…

          • Pariah

            September 21, 2015 at 16:11

            Not if you backdoor it mate…

          • Alien Emperor Trevor

            September 21, 2015 at 16:14

            I can honestly say that never occurred to me lol.

      • Grand Admiral Chief

        September 21, 2015 at 15:50

        I have to throw the cabbage some compost every now and then, else it could get rotten

        Reply

    • Alessandro Barbosa

      September 21, 2015 at 15:45

      <3

      Reply

  2. Commander JJ of the Normandy

    September 21, 2015 at 15:44

    MSi fo lyf

    Reply

    • jesika thamas

      September 22, 2015 at 00:55

      <– my dads buddy just got a nice six-month old Mercedes E-Class E63 AMG from only workin part time online… find more information It’s been six months since i started this and i made so far total of 37,000 dollars. Basicly i profit about 80 dollars every hour and work for 3 to 4 hours a day–>,,,,,,hjkjk,,,,,,

      Open This Link..……

      ???? WWW.PROFIT70.COM ???????????????????????

      Reply

  3. Kromas untamed

    September 21, 2015 at 15:48

    Killer network suite has a tendency to cause micro stutter in windows on both their intel and amd boards. The card itself is fine but I suggest never actually use the software. Get a decent router and you can config port priority settings yourself.

    Other than that MSI is freaken amazing as usual.

    Reply

    • Commander JJ of the Normandy

      September 21, 2015 at 15:49

      Yes. What you said!
      Though I don’t know anything about the porting part, so I shall take your advice.

      Reply

      • Kromas untamed

        September 21, 2015 at 15:51

        Basically telling the network device to always allow certain traffic to have the best connection in laymans terms. What telkom does with adsl.

        Reply

        • Grand Admiral Chief

          September 21, 2015 at 15:52

          I thought Telkom used these to determine best connection:

          http://images.clipartpanda.com/dice-clip-art-LcKeAjBca.jpeg

          Reply

          • Commander JJ of the Normandy

            September 21, 2015 at 15:53

            That’s how Eskom determines bonuses. If it lands on a number between zero and seven you get your bonus.

          • Pariah

            September 21, 2015 at 15:54

            And if you’re management, roll again to determine how many millions your bonus will be this year.

          • Mossel

            September 21, 2015 at 19:22

            More like roll again to determine the factor by which it should be multiplied, if one, roll again.

          • Kromas untamed

            September 21, 2015 at 15:53

            actually they assign 95% of bandwidth to port 80. So anything other than browsing is slow as hell.

            They would not know how to roll a dice.

          • Mossel

            September 21, 2015 at 19:20

            They do, I can confirm this, I’ve seen the actual dice.

        • Commander JJ of the Normandy

          September 21, 2015 at 15:52

          Ah. I see.

          Regards,
          Layman ;P

          Reply

          • Kromas untamed

            September 21, 2015 at 15:54

            I actually use it on my local network to ensure youtube streaming wins above everything cause youtube ruined my life.

            Also gaming.

          • Commander JJ of the Normandy

            September 21, 2015 at 15:56

            Haha. YouTube really has done that to so many of us.
            For some reason my web browsing is slow as hell but everything else (like Steam and gaming) runs well. I’m at Afrihost though.

          • Kromas untamed

            September 21, 2015 at 15:58

            They may be routing http traffic through a different line. I know some companies actually push http through wacs and the rest through seacom.

  4. mark

    July 30, 2017 at 12:00

    I live in Irving. She is a Class A scumbag.

    This is it. After what she pulled and he appoints some racist jerk from an obscure little town in the middle of DFW like IRVING?!?! Whose claim to fame was arresting a kid with a fucking clock????

    If there was ANY question about him being a racist pig, this should solve that outright.
    http://clipartphoto.net/

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Check Also

Twelve Minutes Review – Stuck in a Mystery Time Loop

We’ve all experienced deja vu a few times in our lives, but what happens when you ha…