I've been totally impressed with the MSI Z170A GAMING M7, right from when I opened the shipping container. From the box design and down to getting it all up and running, I had a smile on my face all the way. This most definitely is not the MSI of old. Today's MSI is almost perfect.

Enough can not be said about the MSI Z170A GAMING M7. At a $229 MRSP, I really feel it delivers more than expected, and for a product that was not even launched yet, it definitely did not feel like a "beta", or an early release. All the features work as MSI says they will. The software is rock-solid and the quality here is undeniable once you have the board in your hands. I slapped in my CPU, my memory, and my VGA, installed the OS, and was overclocking within an hour, and I had really found OC stability quickly thanks to the Game Boost knob that let me try out a bunch of different clocks by simply turning that knob into one position and rebooting my system. I simply copied the voltages and started dropping each until I lost stability, which had me bump voltages back up a couple notches; it's that easy. The audio is good and the LAN is decent, so there is just nothing I really want to complain about here.

It seems I keep coming back to one particular point no matter what brand I talk about: Fan control options are not as good as they could be. Colors used might also not be to everyone's liking, but then people will complain about nearly anything. This board rocks. Anyone who doubted DDR4 performance needs to get Intel's Z170A. If you are a gamer, buy an MSI motherboard and a matching VGA. Put it together and it'll work. If you want to just overclock till your CPU blows up, MSI has a different board for that, but this one can do it too. It'd be nice if it came with a free game. Do also keep in mind that I tested with Windows 10. I didn't have any issues. Not one. Let me know what you think in the forums!