MSI announced ten new motherboards based on Intel’s 200-series chipsets that are targeted at gamers.
MSI’s Z270 flagship is the XPower Gaming Titanium. This board has four steel-reinforced PCI-E x16 slots that can support up to a four-way SLI or crossfire multi-GPU configuration. The RAM slots on this board are also reinforced with steel, and they can support RAM XMP profiles that operate at up to 4,133MHz.
MSI didn’t go into detail about what audio codec this motherboard supports, but it does support the company’s Audio Boost 4 and Nahimic 2 audio technologies. It also has EMI shielding to reduce noise.
The Z270 XPower Gaming Titanium also comes equipped with three M.2 Key M ports, USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A and Type-C ports, and two Intel Gigabit NICs. This is the only 200-series motherboard that MSI opted to use two NICs on at this time.
To target the Mini-ITX form factor, MSI also announced the Z270I Gaming Pro Carbon AC. This compact board also has steel reinforced PCI-E and RAM slots, and it supports MSI’s Mystic Light RGB LED technology. MSI integrated a dual-band Intel 8265 802.11ac NIC onto this board to give you easy internet access.
For storage devices, the Z270I Gaming Pro Carbon AC supports four SATA-III ports and a single M.2 Key M slot.
All of these motherboards should be released on January 5. There is no word on pricing at this time.
| MSI 200-Series Motherboards | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model/Spec | Form Factor | Memory Support | Color | PCI-E | Networking | Audio | Ports |
| Z270 XPower Gaming Titanium | ATX | 4 x DDR4 DIMMs Up To 4,133MHz | White | 2 x PCI-E x14 x PCI-E x16 | Intel i210-V Gigabit LANIntel i219-V Gigabit LAN | -Audio Boost 4-Nahimic 2 | -8 x SATA-III-3 x M.2 Key M-U.2-2 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 (Type-C + Type-A) |
| Z270 Gaming M7 | ATX | 4 x DDR4 DIMM Up To 4,133MHz | Black | -3 x PCI-E x1-3 x PCI-E x16 | Killer E2500 Gigabit LAN | -Audio Boost 4 Pro-Nahimic 2 | -6 x SATA-III-3 x M.2 Key M-U.2-3.1 Gen 2 (Type-C + Type-A) |
| Z270 Gaming M5 | ATX | 4 x DDR4 DIMM Up To 3,866MHz | Black | -3 x PCI-E x1-3 x PCI-E x16 | Killer E2500 Gigabit LAN | -Audio Boost 4-Nahimic 2 | -6 x SATA-III-2 x M.2 Key M-U.2-3.1 Gen 2 (Type-C + Type-A) |
| Z270 Sli Plus | ATX | 4 x DDR4 DIMMs Up To 3,800MHz | Black | -3 x PCI-E x1-3 x PCI-E x16 | Intel i219-V | Audio Boost 4 | 6 x SATA-III2 x M.2 Key M3.1 Gen 2 (Type-C + Type-A) |
| Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon | ATX | 4 x DDR4 DIMM Up To 3,800MHz | Black | -3 x PCI-E x1-3 x PCI-E x16 | Intel i219-V Gigabit LAN | -Audio Boost 4-Nahimic 2 | -6 x SATA-III-2 x M.2 Key M-3.1 Gen 2 (Type-C + Type-A) |
| Z270 Tomahawk | ATX | 4 x DDR4 DIMMs Up To 3,800MHz | Black | -3 x PCI-E x1-3 x PCI-E x16 | Intel i219-V Gigabit LAN | Audio Boost | -6 x SATA-III-2 x M.2 Key M-3.1 Gen 2 (Type-C + Type-A) |
| Z270 Krait Gaming | ATX | 4 x DDR4 DIMMs Up To 3,200MHz | Black And White | -3 x PCI-E x1-3 x PCI-E 3.0 | Intel i219-V Gigabit LAN | -Audio Boost 4-Nahimic 2 | -6 x SATA-III-2 x M.2 Key M-3.1 Gen 2 (Type-C + Type-A) |
| Z270I Gaming Pro Carbon AC | Mini-ITX | 4 x DDR4 DIMMs Up To 4,000MHz | Black | -1 x PCI-E x16 | -Intel i219-V Gigabit LAN-Intel 8265 Dual-Band 802.11ac Wi-Fi NIC | -Audio Boost 4-Nahimic 2 | -4 x SATA-III-1 x M.2 Key M-3.1 Gen 2 (Type-C + Type-A) |
| H270M Mortar Arctic | Micro-ATX | 4 x DDR4 DIMM Up To 2,400MHz | White | -2 x PCI-E x1-2 x PCI-E x16 | Intel i219-V Gigabit LAN | Audio Boost | -6x SATA-III-1 x M.2 Key M-USB 3.1 Gen 1 (Type-C + Type-A) |
| B250M Mortar | Micro-ATX | 4 x DDR4 DIMM Up To 2,400MHz | Black And Grey | -2 x PCI-E x1-2 x PCI-E x16 | Intel i219-V Gigabit LAN | Audio Boost | -6 x SATA-III-1 x M.2 Key M-USB 3.1 Gen 1 (Type-C + Type-A) |
Well done, motherboard design dudes! :P
I'm still running a 3770k as well. I just upgrade my graphics card every once and a while and I'm good. I think the motivating factor of my next upgrade will be if I run out of PCI-E slots and want to use an M.2 SSD.
@uglyduckling81: I can understand that point too. I'm sort of in the middle. I care more about function than anything else, but I w ant it to look nice too. I don't particularly like all of the RGB LEDs on everything though.
2x 1TB 960 Pro in RAID0 would be heaven
Still limited to 4 lanes of DMI 3.0 between the CPU and the chipset though, so don't get too carried away else you will create a bottleneck.
Yes, all 200-series motherboards support Skylake and Kaby Lake processors. There are a few exceptions that won't work on these, such as the Skylake Xeon CPUs, but everything else will work fine.