Test System

Initial Setup

Putting a PC together in my test bench doesn't take me very long these days. The full process takes about 15 or 20 minutes, before I'm in the BIOS to check out what's there while making sure things like water pumps and boot devices are all in order. For the rest, I leave everything at stock and get an OS installed. Usually, everything is ready at the 45 minute mark after which I install drivers off the included discs. While doing so, I like to look around the board, check temperatures with an infrared thermometer and my fingers, and listen for any odd noise, like coil whine.


Hit the power button and the MSI Z170A GAMING M7 comes to life, lights popping on all over the place. The first thing I noticed was a red glow coming out of the LAN ports. MSI touts this as a hint of extra protection built into the port itself, so if that light goes out...you have problems.


The audio's line of separation lights up thanks to some red LEDs on the board's underside, and at the edge of that line sits a dual-digit POST CODE display that switches to displaying CPU temperatures once the POST process is complete.


The POWER and RESET buttons light up as well, and while it looks as though the SATA ports have an LED, that's merely a reflection from one of the four LEDs that sit under each corner of the PCH cooler, which adds more light to the mix.


Of course, it is usually a good idea to update to the most recent BIOS, and I always do so when reviewing boards, especially when I have the product before it ends up on retail shelves. I'll just be honest and say the BIOS is a bit raw when it comes to pushing higher ram clocks, but MSI isn't the only brand with this problem, so this single mention of it is all I'll make. All brands are working as hard as they can to get any last BIOS tweaks complete and properly tested before releasing them to the general public. Of course, if there are no updates, I'll simply go with what I got.