[section_title title=”Conclusion”]

Conclusion

Having gone through the routine with the MSI Z170A GAMING PRO CARBON, does it have what you would need to consider it for your next computer build? It has that LED flare that a lot of gamers and/or enthusiasts are after at the moment, as it is apparently the new craze when it comes to PC building. It manages to hold a good overclock and it still performs pretty darn well given its pricing. I’ll go over a few of the finer points in greater detail, which will hopefully help you to draw your own conclusion on the MSI Z170A GAMING PRO CARBON.

One of the key points concerning this board is the way it is designed, with its unique LED system. Personally, it’s not something I’d be opting for, but there are a lot of you out there that would almost be willing to kill for such a feature on a motherboard. Be that as it may, I am not here to share my personal feelings, so I shall talk about the product in question. The way that you can customise the CARBON is literally endless when it comes to those LEDs on the right-hand side of the motherboard. You have got literally the entire RGB spectrum to play with, and you can make it do all sorts of cool things with it, to make the rig truly unique. I spent some time with the software and I was able to get it to show some pretty amazing colours, which I’d imagine would look amazing within a chassis compared to my benching table. They are quite bright, and although you can turn them off, it would be a nice touch to be able to dim them a little, dependent on a user’s requirements.

At the price point of £125 ($170), I can’t strictly call this a budget motherboard. Whilst the board is cheaper compared to some of the other products on the market that can get close to triple the cost, it isn’t the cheapest on the market. For the price, it is rivalling something along the lines of the GAMING 3 or 5 from GIGABYTE or the ASUS Maximus VIII Ranger. I can appreciate that the LED customisation adds somewhat when it comes to pricing, which is fair to take into consideration. If the board was perhaps £10 or so cheaper, it would be an absolute steal. What you get for the money is one capable board, able to provide dual or even triple graphics support, a PCI-E M.2 slot, a SATAe connectivity option, both USB 3.1 Type A and Type C, and a whole lot more. Are you still not entirely convinced? Okay, let’s go over a few more details.

Customisation is clearly something which MSI is trying to push on this motherboard with the LEDs on the board. The possibility of colours is literally endless as you have over 16 million colours to choose from, and you also have a multitude of options to display them in as you can see in my video in the introduction. If you guys keep up with what I have said previously and you know what I am like, you’ll notice that the customisation side of things isn’t strictly my cup of tea, but I can most certainly see where it would be appealing. That’s not to say that I would never use it, I know for a fact that I could very easily spend many hours tinkering to get the perfect colour or different combination to fit my rig, so please don’t take that the wrong way. In actual fact, being brutally honest, I’d like to see this feature built in to more motherboards and to have even more control over the effects that you can use. Gaming is where the PC market is headed, and this LED fad is something which I strongly believe will stay with us for the foreseeable future.

The motherboard is a little more crammed, almost like a slim ATX motherboard, which means that some of the parts have had to be moved compared in order to fit. As such, the M.2 port has had to go above the first PCI-E x16 lane in order to not clash with any other components. It’s actually isn’t a bad location, as it allows the drive to be cooled a little better compared to when they are crammed underneath the graphics card with far less airflow. In case some of you weren’t aware, the high-end Samsung drives can hit thermal throttle limits during sustained writes, so any airflow is a big bonus in these situations.

There was no clear performance sustained throughout our testing. It ranges from some of the lowest to some of the highest results we’ve collected thus far in our Z170 journey. It really is a tough one to call due to the vast variance in our results collected. A general consensus is that the results are typically within a margin of error from a statistical standpoint, but the results speak for themselves. The CARBON typically averaged somewhere in between the lower half and the middle of the charts, with a few exceptions where it actually outperformed some motherboards in a near 40 per cent price range increase. However, overall, the results were a little disappointing. Perhaps it is a feature over function situation here. The majority of us will never even notice the difference between some of the lower end motherboards and the ultra-high-end motherboards; it’s merely in benchmarks where the results are obvious. It is worth noting that in most of our testing, while it does show how it stacks up against other motherboards, it is mostly within a margin of error. As I said earlier, it is a statistical difference of absolutely squat, nothing, nada.

To clear it all up and to answer that important question; is this board worth the purchase if you are going into the Skylake market, enjoy the pretty lighting effects and can’t afford to shell out masses for an alternative? Well, I’d say so, absolutely! It has all of the latest connectivity options with regards to the PCI-E M.2 slot and the USB 3.1 Type-A/Type-C ports too. It’s a great all-round budget motherboard with the gamer/enthusiast in mind. Performance aspects aside, it’s a winner from MSI. I’m therefore happy to award the MSI Z170A GAMING PRO CARBON with our Silver Award, as it is just a few points shy of claiming a golden trophy. I also feel that it is worthy of our Value Award as it does offer a lot of product for not a lot of dollar.

As always, I’d like to finally conclude by thanking MSI for sending us a sample to review.