MSI H310M Gaming Plus Motherboard Review: Affordable Basics
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How We Test
Comparison Products
We’ll compare the MSI H310M Gaming Plus to similarly priced and appointed boards, the ASRock H310M-G/M.2 and the Asus TUF H310M-Plus Gaming, which we’re also working on reviewing. The test system for this round of boards contains different hardware than other reviewers (video card and RAM) as well as an updated W10 64-bit OS (to use the RTX based GPU), so the data is not comparable to other reviews of the same chipset.
Test System Components
CPU | Core i3-8350K |
Memory | Fury DDR4 |
Graphics | GeForce RTX 2060 Founders Edition |
SSD | OCZ RD400 |
Cooler | CLC 240 |
PSU | EVGA G3 750W |
Sound | Integrated HD audio |
Network | Integrated gigabit networking |
Graphics Driver | GeForce 419.67 |
Benchmark Settings
Synthetic Benchmarks and Settings | |
PCMark 8 | Version 2.7.613Home, Creative, Work, Storage, Applications (Adobe & Microsoft) |
3DMark 13 | Version 4.47.597.0Skydiver, Firestrike, Firestrike Extreme Default Presets |
SiSoftware Sandra | Version 2016.03.22.21CPU Arithmetic, Multimedia, Cryptography, Memory Bandwidth |
DiskSPD | 4K Random Read, 4K Random Write128K Sequential Read, 128K Sequential Write |
Cinebench R15 | Build RC83328DEMOOpenGL Benchmark |
CompuBench | Version 1.5.8Face Detection, Optical Flow, Ocean Surface, Ray Tracing |
Application Tests and Settings | |
LAME MP3 | Version 3.98.3Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3: Command: -b 160 --nores (160Kb/s) |
HandBrake CLI | Version: 0.9.9Sintel Open Movie Project: 4.19GB 4K mkv to x265 mp4 |
Blender | Version 2.68aBMW 27 CPU Render Benchmark, BMW 27 GPU Render Benchmark |
7-Zip | Version 16.02THG-Workload (7.6GB) to .7z, command line switches "a -t7z -r -m0=LZMA2 -mx=9" |
Adobe After Effects CC | Release 2015.3.0, Version 13.8.0.144PCMark-driven routine |
Adobe Photoshop CC | Release 2015.5.0, 20160603.r.88 x64PCMark-driven routine (light and heavy) |
Adobe InDesign CC | Release 2015.4, Build 11.4.0.90 x64PCMark-driven routine |
Adobe Illustrator | Release 2015.3.0, Version 20.0.0 (64-bit)PCMark-driven routine |
Game Tests and Settings | |
Ashes of the Singularity | Version 1.31.21360High Preset - 1920 x 1080, Mid Shadow Quality, 1x MSAACrazy Preset - 1920 x 1080, High Shadow Quality, 2x MSAA |
F1 2015 | 2015 Season, Abu Dhabi track, RainMedium Preset, no AFUltra High Preset, 16x AF |
Metro: Last Light Redux | Version 3.00 x64High Quality, 1920 x 1080, High Tesselation, 16x AFVery High Quality, 1920 x 1080, Very High Tesselation, 16x AF |
The Talos Principle | Version 267252Medium Preset, High Quality, High Tesselation, 4x AFUltra Preset, Very High Quality, Very High Tesselation, 16x AF |
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Joe Shields is a Freelance writer for Tom’s Hardware US. He reviews motherboards.
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helpstar Hi there, just had a look at the review´s specification.Reply
The form factor is not ATX, it´s micro-ATX
legacy port is missing: PS/2 Combo Port as well as supported CPU generations of Intel
In the RAM section, it would be nice to write in there, that this board will only use 2666MHz, no matter if better clocked RAM is installed
What I missed in the review: the audio chip will work in 7.1 HD sound, if the front audio is used in combination with the rear ports
Other than that, thanks for the nice review -
rsquared "for those on a tight build budget who don’t not plan on overclocking " ... What, "don't not"?? So who DO plan on overclocking?Reply -
TJ Hooker I wish people wouldn't refer to total # of phases as a single number, i.e. "7-phase VRM" in this article. If you're going to list a single number it should be the # of phases for the CPU core IMO, otherwise list it as Core+Uncore (or Core+Uncore+Memory). This board appears to be 4+2+1.Reply -
NightHawkRMX Yea, agree there.Reply
Reminds me of the people selling "10 core gaming pcs" but in reality it has 4 bulldozer cpu cores and 6 radeon cores.