MSI Z170A GAMING M7 (LGA 1151) Motherboard Review

The Test System and Test Software

Before we delve into any testing we would like to take this opportunity to review our test system.

Test System

• Motherboard varies by review
• CPU: Intel Core i7 6770k
• GPU: NVIDIA GTX 980Ti
• RAM: Crucial Elite 16GB (2x8GB) 2666MHz
• Cooling: Thermaltake Water 3.0 AIO with Gelid GC-Extreme
• Case: Lian Li T80 Test Bench
• Storage Drives: Main storage: Crucial M200 250GB, Test Devices: SanDisk Extreme Pro 240GB SSD, Plextor 256GB M6e M.2 SSD and Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 256GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive
• PSU: be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 850W
• Operating System: Windows 8.1 64-bit
• Networking: ASUS RT-AC68U router

Test Software

• SiSoft Sandra Engineer – available here
• WPrime – available here
• Cinebench – available here
• 3DMark – available here
• Bioshock Infinite – available here
• Tomb Raider – available here
• AIDA 64 Engineer – available here
• Latencymon – available here
• Rightmark Audio Analyser – available here
• LAN Speed Test Lite – available here
• Passmark – available here

All tests are conducted three times and the average taken to use in our charts.