REVIEW MSI Z170A Krait Gaming Motherboard

Hi everyone, I really wanted to share this motherboard with everyone.
I have been fortunate enough to receive the MSI z170A Krait motherboard to feature
in one of my upcoming builds which will feature at the MSI booth at PAX Australia.

I decided to create a small thread on this board because at first glance I am so impressed with the features and looks of this board.



First impressions are everything when trying to look for a motherboard, especially from a modders perspective.
At first glance this stylish box caught my eye. It features a snake skin pattern across the box with some stylish writing.



The Motherboard comes packed nice and tight, protected with extra cardboard padding.
In the box you receive two sata cables, the usual books, CD Driver, sli bridge and IO Shield.



The MSI Z170 Krait motherboard is very stylish. Whether you are for looks or performance,
the Z170 Krait motherboard will cover both aspects.



Black and white is defiantly a colour combination that will suit any build.
The MSI Krait Z170 motherboard carries out this colour scheme throughout the whole board making it a pc modders dream
motherboard as it focuses on two key colours or shades if you want to get specific.



The colour scheme helps make for a nice clean build. A nice white glow from LED lights will highlight
this motherboard quite nicely in any build. Or you can go crazy with those bright colours.



There is more to this board than just the looks, this board features some high spec qualities.
The sound quality is amazing featuring Audio boost 3 allowing you to enjoy those crystal clear sounds while gaming.



The MSI Krait z170 board supports DDR4 and with one push of a button you can instantly over clock
your system for faster speeds and better experiences while using Game boost.



This board features plenty of USB slots including the super fast USB 3.1 slots which
are capable of transfer speeds two times faster than USB 3.



Customize and create your own custom commands on the MSI Z170 Krait motherboard with gaming hot key.
Gaming Hot Key allows you to assign different features to any assigned key. Perhaps open your favourite game with a single press of a buttom.



The possibilities are endless with this board, so far I am very impressed and I cannot wait to start this system and test out these features for myself once the motherboard is up and running i will bench it and provide the numbers.
I would defiantly recommend this board to all PC enthusiasts due to the simple but stylish design which makes for a nice clean build.

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I might be biased, but that is one lovely looking board
Nice one Corey

 

Retarded SATA connector positioning.

 

Is this a review, or "I like the way it looks because..."?

Need to know how it performs, how it compares, etc.

 

There's a revision coming shortly that fixes this.

Well, it is for a show off PAX build!

 

Sure, it looks "nice", like many other stylish PCBs. But how does it perform and overclock? The review is mainly about cosmetics and a few things that are obvious like the number of US ports.

 

I think the review tags should be removed from the thread topic. This is basically blatant advertisement.

 

The colour combination black and white does look nice

 

Hey buddy, as i said above i will be benching this when it is up and running.

Hey buddy, as a said above the benching will happen as i get the build up and running.

Hey buddy, as i said above the benching will happen once i get the board in the build and it is up and running.

 

So you basically haven't done anything with it yet but you're already recommending it, because it's got nice colours? You could try to be a little more subtle

 

Why so much negative comments guys give the guy a chance and I'm sure if you don't scare him off he'll post some more

 

1) He's already blowing his load over the pictures so this won't be a very objective review.

2) It's MSI so it will be crap. Don't care what you say, they will never be at Asus/Gigabyte level. Well not any time soon.

3) booj has already said that there is a new revision of the board coming out to fix the sata port palcement. So why not review that one instead?

he's just off to a bad start already. Sorry, just being blatantly honest here.

 

Disagree that MSI are crap. They have come a long way in short time. I tortured a Z97 Mpower and it was an amazing board.

 

Of course i am reccomending it on first impressions, a review also includes personal opinions and first impressions is all i have to go off if it is not up and running yet. The board really does look great and when i get some benching results when it is up and running then that is when you can judge this board.

1) You cannot take away from a beautiful board and the hard work of a company just because you are an Asus/Gigabyte fan.MSI put a lot of work into this board and first impressions and my own personal opinion is all i have to go off of at the moment because the board isnt even up and running yet. So of course there is going to be opinions on looks. The next part is all about the benching which is when you guys can form an opinion based on numbers aswell as the looks. The colour scheme is very important to a lot of people. And the replacement board isnt out yet so this is what i am reviewing.

Haha dont worry i wont get scared off =) they just do not understand that when i board isnt up and running yet there isnt much to go off of apart from first impressions and looks of the board aswell as features. Benching will happen, i just need to get it into my build =)

100% agree, i always use MSI because i have never had any problems with them and they respect you.

 

If you want to write a review, prepared to actually write a review. All you've done here is take pictures of it and talk about how pretty it is and how much you love MSI in return for the board.

I doubt anyone who has visited the thread already will be back to see the results of your "review".

Maybe what you should have done was post all these pictures in your "build log" like everyone else does. Or complete the review as a review should be, with comparisons, results, etc, and wait until you've got all the information together before posting.

You current "review" comes across as blatant advertising.

Sorry.

 

Jeez guys go easy on him. Not everyone lives on OCAU and know the rules in and out or gives more than 1/10th of a squirt of goats pee about post count, and anyone that does, i'd say get a life lol..

I know this guy who runs the NSA who had 41547252938502435 MSI boards die too,.. Snowden told me so.. Seriously I had 2 Asus boards die, one with a blown cap on the USB 3 header and another stuck on FF post code. I'm not going to troll in anyones Asus thread because I know they make some decent, if (in my worthless opinion) overpriced stuff.

The last thing we need is typical schoolboy fanboy crap like we see on OCN.. Nvidia sucks, AMD sucks, Gigabyte sucks, MSI sucks.. we get it.. everyone sucks.. but everyone is pretty much OK too according to anyone who cares, or doesn't care or collects matchboxes or has a 3 stroke golf handicap.

FYI this guy is one of the finest case modders in the country. He makes works of art with MSI, Asus, Gigabyte or whoever, they all look amazing. I'm a ford guy but that doesn't mean i don't appreciate a lovely looking Commodore or GTR or Citroen 2CV when i see one.

He already said he'll update later with some actual testing. If anything, his mistake was posting the first part of the 'review' at this stage.

 

Only person made a comment about MSI. They are entitled to their opinion, aren't they? Trying to stop fanboyism on any enthusiast (computer or whatever) forum is pretty futile.

Great, so he can post in that section of the forums then

Calling it a 'review' is the mistake. It is a collection of photos with some minimally rephrased marketing dot points.

 

To me,MSI's quite in a level with ASUS and Gigabyte now! I personally love the Gaming series one. They have put lots of effort!

 

So you signed up in January of this year, haven't made a single post (literally zero post history, not even in the FS section that doesn't count. Zero.) and suddenly you're in here praising MSI after they get spoken about negatively? That.. seems.. odd.

 

The SATA ports are a real turn off for me. Reminds me of a lot of those cheap system builder boards that Asus and Gigabyte use to make. There is also a huge design problem as well. Put in a 2nd long GPU and effectively you've blocked off a least 2 maybe even all 4 of those white SATA ports.

One gripe and this is not just at MSI or this board (because I know this board uses the Intel NIC) but can we stop using those gimmicky Killer NICs for high end boards? The bloatware is annoying, no windows drive support out of the box is even worst. If lost your driver disk and forgot to download the drivers and had to do a format install of Windows your not going to have a nice time. I've had something similar happen to a Gigabyte board a while back (and this was with a Win8.1 install), lucky I had a backup machine at home I could use otherwise I would have been putting a hammer through the motherboard.