MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC Motherboard Review

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How We Test

The Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC goes up against its most closely priced rivals in today’s comparison.

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SoundIntegrated HD Audio
NetworkIntegrated Gigabit Networking
Graphics DriverGeForce 382.53

Back during the X299 launch, we upgraded our test bed to handle the tremendous heat produced by the Core i9-7900X. Our award-winning Fractal Design S24 liquid cooler system sample serves the same purpose for the newer, lower heat Core i7-8700K. Cooler Master’s HAF-XB provides an optimal layout to blow the Celsius S24’s fans sufficiently over each motherboard’s voltage regulator.

Comparison Products

All of the boards in today’s test have a broad enough range of overclock setting to reach similar heights, but some have finer increments than others. EVGA’s 1mV setting steps are deceiving in that we couldn’t tell where we’d end up without excessive testing (the 15mV jump in DRAM, for example, was merely discovered after testing many 1mV increments).

Benchmark Settings

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Synthetic Benchmarks and Settings
PCMark 8Version 2.7.613Home, Creative, Work, Storage, Applications (Adobe & Microsoft)
3DMark 13Version 4.47.597.0Skydiver, Firestrike, Firestrike Extreme Default Presets
SiSoftware SandraVersion 2016.03.22.21CPU Arithmetic, Multimedia, Cryptography, Memory Bandwidth
DiskSPD4k Random Read, 4k Random Write128k Sequential Read, 128k Sequential Write
Cinebench R15Build RC83328DEMOOpenGL Benchmark
CompuBenchVersion 1.5.8Face Detection, Optical Flow, Ocean Surface, Ray Tracing
Application Tests and Settings
LAME MP3Version 3.98.3Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3: Command: -b 160 --nores (160 Kb/s)
HandBrake CLIVersion: 0.9.9Sintel Open Movie Project: 4.19 GB 4k mkv to x265 mp4
BlenderVersion 2.68aBMW 27 CPU Render Benchmark, BMW 27 GPU Render Benchmark
7-ZipVersion 16.02THG-Workload (7.6 GB) to .7z, command line switches "a -t7z -r -m0=LZMA2 -mx=9"
Adobe After Effects CCRelease 2015.3.0, Version 13.8.0.144PCMark driven routine
Adobe Photoshop CCRelease 2015.5.0. 20160603.r.88 x64PCMark driven routine (light and heavy)
Adobe InDesign CCRelease 2015.4, Build 11.4.0.90 x64PCMark driven routine
Adobe IllustratorRelease 2015.3.0, Version 20.0.0 (64-bit)PCMark driven routine
Game Tests and Settings
Ashes of SingularityVersion 1.31.21360High Preset - 1920x1080, Mid Shadow Quality, 1x MSAACrazy Preset - 1920x1090, High Shadow Quality, 2x MSAA
F1 20152015 Season, Abu Dhabi Track, RainMedium Preset, No AFxUltra High Preset, 16x AF
Metro Last Light ReduxVersion 3.00 x64High Quality, 1920x1080, High Tesselation, 16x AFVery High Quality, 1920x1080, Very High Tesselation, 16x AF
The Talos PrincipleVersion 267252Medium Preset, High Quality, High Tesselation, 4x AFUltra Preset, VeryHigh Quality, VeryHigh Tesselation, 16x AF

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Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
  • ehmkec
    Mystic Light works!!! Nah - not for me anyway. I've got a MSI z270 Titaniam MB and MSI GTX 1080to and I have never got Mystic Light to work. Tried today and still my GPU does not show. Sometimes its the MB and not the GPU. Flakey! And what really makes me mad is that Mystic Light does not show up in the Live Update tool list. So I suspect they have not truly supported ML yet. They sure push it though.
    Reply
  • Crashman
    20634570 said:
    Mystic Light works!!! Nah - not for me anyway. I've got a MSI z270 Titaniam MB and MSI GTX 1080to and I have never got Mystic Light to work. Tried today and still my GPU does not show. Sometimes its the MB and not the GPU. Flakey! And what really makes me mad is that Mystic Light does not show up in the Live Update tool list. So I suspect they have not truly supported ML yet. They sure push it though.
    Ahah! It's always great to hear from people's experience: The article comment was one of amazement since Mystic Light has been so prone to lockups in previous tests.
    Reply