The Board - Layout

So here's your first look at the MSI Z170A GAMING M7. Front and rear are fairly busy, but that confusion is completely compensated for by the new cooling design's sleek esthetics. While red and black has been done countless times before, THIS is a new kind of red. What you saw on the box front is EXACTLY what you get.


The socket area is crazy looking, with red circuits printed onto the surface on one side of the socket. Opening the socket reveals the 1151 pins that make these new Intel chips work. As you can see, there are some extra contact points on the CPU, but they are quite different from the other lands. The MSI Z170A GAMING M7's socket clearly doesn't have the ability to touch these points, but my testing thus far shows that it doesn't matter at all. With X99, there was some difference with memory compatibility at first, but as time progressed and the BIOS matured, most of those issues were fixed, and although an OC socket could allow for better CPU cache scaling or crazy LN2 overclocking differences, nothing there really made a difference to an average end user.


The four DIMM slots are reputed to support speeds in excess of 3600 MHz and the metal-reinforced main PCIe slots are ready to carry your high-end VGAs if you put this board into a carry-around LAN box.


There are two M.2 SSD slots here for you to use, with both featuring full-speed PCIe 3.0 x4 links, though only one supports an NVME device provided you use an add-in card you have to buy separately.


The backplate has a PS/2 port for those who hate N-Key roll-over issues, USB ports, and not one but two HDMI ports that can be powered through the iGPU most CPUs should include (I'm not sure about how XEON-variants of these CPUs will work or if they will come). The rest is standard-fare, other than the USB 3.1 Type-C port. SATA connectivity includes six ports in total, with four positions to be used as, alternatively, SATA Express ports should you happen to find some device that uses those plugs. I'm greatly disappointed to say that SATA Express devices are few and far between.


The bottom of the board holds the usual audio and USB headers, along with a POST display, and we find a bunch of buttons on the bottom's right side; Power, RESET, a "slow mode" switch, a flashback button, and that other thing with a red button up top. I'll go into greater detail on what that red button does in a moment.