Board Layout

MSI's Z270 GAMING M7 comes with a nearly 100% black aesthetic, and there is no shiny black PCB here either. The board is complex and there is stuff all over the front of the board, and the CPU VRM's input drivers are on the rear.


With the input drivers on the rear of the board, the front of the socket area looks pretty clean and neat, flanked by the VRM cooler and DIMM slots (capable of 4133 MHz and beyond).


You get three PCIE x16 slots and three PCIe x1 slots on the MSI Z270 GAMING M7, along with 6 SATA ports and a single U.2 port.


M.2 connectivity features a total of three ports, all capable of PCIe 3.0 x4 links (32 GB/s).


The bottom edge of the board actually has less pin headers than I would have expected, along with some buttons and the automated OC Dial that can "Turn your clocks up to 11!"


The rear I/O panel only has a few USB ports of different speeds and a LAN port, audio plugs, and HDMI and DisplayPort video links. I was very pleased to see a Clear CMOS button here. That LAN port is powered via a Killer E2500 controller. I know Intel is the popular choice, but this one doesn't perform too poorly either.