MSI Z270 XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM Motherboard Review

It wouldn’t be an unfair to ask whether or not the MSI Z270 XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM motherboard is worthy of a platinum award, or any award in that case. I firmly believe the XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM to be one of the most well-rounded top end motherboards on the Z270 chipset. Although some top/professional extreme overclockers might swerve this board due to the fact it has 4 x DIMM slots, it’s hard to make a top end motherboard to serve EVERY type of consumer; overclockers, gamers and workstation users.

Touching on some of the main features of this motherboard, the most notable is the 4 x PCIe x16 lanes which for an ATX board to utilise is simply brilliant. The MSI OC Dashboard panel is also a nice touch and it allows users to directly control their clock speed and base clock directly from the panel; perfect for on the fly overclocking! Memory support is relatively good too with memory of up to 4133MHz OC are supported. Not all ATX boards can support memory of this speed, so it’s nice to see a 4 DIMM ATX board do well in this regard; it’s just a shame 2 DIMM boards still wins out.

To touch on the overclocking side, the XPOWER is an absolute beast in terms of specs with a 16 phase design, an extra 4pin 12 CPU input and of course, a 6pin PCIe x16 lane power input; additional power is always helpful, especially in those extreme situations. I did manage to get 6GHz out of my Intel Core i7-7700K although I couldn’t get past cold bug issues at -120c; this is due to the XPOWER retail motherboards needing a hard mod (a guide is coming to allow you to fix this). Aside from that (for me a big issue, but not for most), the XPOWER delivers in terms of performance, aesthetics and of course, price when compared to the top boards in the ASUS and GIGABYTE line up.

Is the MSI Z270 XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM the best Z270 motherboard? One could make the case that it’s right up there, but any answer I give is subjective to your personal needs and wants. One thing I can say, it’s certainly the most feature packed motherboard within retail channels and for the money, it’s the best value flagship motherboard when you compare the pricing to the absolute top models available from ASUS and GIGABYTE.

If you are looking for a real flagship motherboard, for £340/$330, you not only get a unique styling with tons of features, but it actually performs as well as it should do. If that tickles your fancy, make sure you check out the Z270 XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM. Extreme overclockers might not be as impressed due to the required hard mod to make the most of it, but enthusiasts and gamers should be glad to have such a beast inside their system. This board will make the most out of the Intel Kaby Lake processors, so what’s not to want?