MSI Z170A SLI Plus Motherboard Review

MSI’s Z170 motherboard product stack is pretty full, there are so many motherboards it is hard to narrow it down to a single board for your Z170 build. MSI has put a lot of focus on their Gaming Series that their Pro Series is often overlooked. Today we will be taking a look at a motherboard that has everything that you would want in a Z170 motherboard, without many of the extras that you won’t use. With that it comes in at a price that won’t break the bank. The motherboard I am talking about is the Z170A SLI Plus which features two shielded PCI-Express slots that support SLI and CrossFire, a 32 Gb/s M.2 slot, USB 3.1, and six SATA 6GB/s ports. As you can guess this board is designed for people who will be using two graphics cards and do not need all of the extra things on many of the motherboards we see on the market. Let’s see if the Z170A SLI Plus is the perfect board for your next Z170 build.

Special thanks to MSI for providing us with the Z170A SLI Plus Motherboard to review.

Features
– Supports 6th Gen Intel® Core™ / Pentium® / Celeron® processors for LGA 1151 socket
– Supports DDR4-3600 Memory (OC)
– DDR4 Boost: Give your DDR4 memory a performance boost
– USB 3.1 Gen2 2X FASTER: USB 3.1 Gen2 offers performance twice as fast as a regular USB 3.0 connection
– Turbo M.2 32Gb/s + Turbo U.2 ready + USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C + SATA 6Gb/s
– MULTI-GPU with Steel Armor: Steel Armor PCI-E slots. Supports NVIDIA SLI™ and AMD Crossfire™
– OC Genie 4: Overclock in 1 Second
– Click BIOS 5: Award-winning brand new Click BIOS 5 with high resolution scalable font
– Audio Boost: Reward your ears with studio grade sound quality
– Military Class 4: Top Quality & Stability
– Guard-Pro: Improved Protection and Power Efficiency
– EZ Debug LED: Easiest way to troubleshoot
– Overvoltage Protection:Prevent Unforeseen Damage
– 4K UHD Support: Ultra-high Definition Visual Experience
– Windows 10 Ready: 100% Compatibility, Performance, Trusted and Certified.

For a full list of specifications on the Z170A SLI Plus be sure to check out the product page.

Packaging
The Z170A SLI Plus comes in a rather unassuming retail box that just says “Z170A SLI Plus”.

MSI Z170A SLI Plus Motherboard

Flipping the box over some of the main features are detailed. There is an also an overview of thee I/O ports and list of specifications.

MSI Z170A SLI Plus Motherboard

Getting everything out of the box we have 4 SATA cables, a SLI bridge, I/O shield, quick installation guide, user guide, and drivers and utilities CD.

MSI Z170A SLI Plus Motherboard

For a full unboxing and overview of the Z170A SLI Plus be sure to check out our video.

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