Monday, May 23rd 2016
MSI Announces the Z170A MPower Gaming Titanium
MSI announced its second Gaming Titanium socket LGA1151 motherboard after the Z170A XPower Gaming Titanium, the Z170A MPower Gaming Titanium. This board features a slightly lighter feature-set than its XPower sibling. It retains the silvery white color-scheme of the PCB, with silver/chrome heatsinks and heatspreaders; and even features a white back-plate on its reverse side. The rather minimalist-looking board features a 11-phase CPU VRM; and features reinforcement braces along its four DDR4 DIMM slots, and three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (x16/NC/x4 or x8/x8/x4). Other expansion slots include three PCIe 3.0 x1.
Storage connectivity includes two 32 Gb/s M.2 slots, one 32 Gb/s U.2 port, and six SATA 6 Gb/s. Among its modern connectivity options are two USB 3.1 ports (one each of type-A and type-C), seven USB 3.0 (including one internal type-C port), AudioBoost 3 onboard 8-channel audio, and one gigabit Ethernet connection (driven by an Intel controller). The company didn't reveal pricing or availability.
Storage connectivity includes two 32 Gb/s M.2 slots, one 32 Gb/s U.2 port, and six SATA 6 Gb/s. Among its modern connectivity options are two USB 3.1 ports (one each of type-A and type-C), seven USB 3.0 (including one internal type-C port), AudioBoost 3 onboard 8-channel audio, and one gigabit Ethernet connection (driven by an Intel controller). The company didn't reveal pricing or availability.
25 Comments on MSI Announces the Z170A MPower Gaming Titanium
The only thing more ridiculous is the new 42 inch, 1.3k dell 4k monitor having a VGA connector on it. Let the tech die already.
Just seems silly a $150+ board still has a keyboard connector from the 90s, when USB has been the standard for over a decade. Especially when PS/2 could be Finicky at times.
As for VGA and even DVI, I've hoped to see their demise for quite some time, but alas...
Not everyone even bothers to know that their 5000+dpi gaming mice with super-fast response times and 2KHz sampling rates are still bound by limitations of 64KB/s best case USB HID communication speed (not too far away from PS/2).As soon as 1440p goes mainstream. I'm forced to upgrade my monitor because this transition has already started: my Skylake PC has no analog output on iGP DVI port, just as my upcoming 1070 won't have one. I'm still happy with my shitty 1080p display from LG, but I guess it is time to finally spend some cash on that Dell Ultrasharp I've been looking at for the past 5 months.
Also, PS/2 actually has quite a few advantages over USB-HID, ironically.
She's rockin a 1000w PSU, Crosshair IV mobo, Phenom II x6, Dominator RAM... lol... Hell, she's even got an ROG 5870 with 2GB VRAM! The Sims screams on that computer! Now we just gotta get her an SSD! Still using PS/2 and VGA...