MSI Z270 SLI PLUS Motherboard Review

Like most motherboard manufactures MSI has quite the Intel Z270 motherboard lineup, separated into a few different categories. Starting off you have the Gaming Series, which of course is targeted at gamers as well as enthusiasts. Next you have the Performance Gaming, which is where you’ll find the Krait and Carbon motherboards. The last gaming series from MSI is the Arsenal Gaming Series, which has the Tomahawk, Mortar and Bazooka board. Not part of the Gaming Series is the Pro Series, which is designed for great performance, but without all of the flash and extra’s you’ll find on the gaming series boards. Today we are checking out the Z270 SLI PLUS which is part of the Pro Series. It has great features like Military Class 5 components, Turbo M.2 slots, USB 3.1, support for SLI and Crossfire, and much more. You get all of this for a very reasonable $133! Let’s jump in and see what this motherboard is all about!

Special thanks to MSI for providing us with the Z270 SLI PLUS Motherboard to review.

Features:
– Supports 7th / 6th Gen Intel® Core™ / Pentium® / Celeron® processors for LGA 1151 socket
– Supports DDR4-3800+(OC) Memory
– DDR4 Boost with Steel Armor: Give your DDR4 memory a performance boost
– VR Ready and VR Boost: Best virtual reality experience without latency, reduces motion sickness
– Audio Boost 4: Reward your ears with studio grade sound quality for a true HI-FI experience
– MULTI-GPU: With Steel Armor PCI-E slots. Supports NVIDIA SLI™ & AMD Crossfire™
– EZ Debug LED: Easiest way to troubleshoot
– Twin Turbo M.2 with Steel Armor: Delivering Speeds Up to 32Gb/s, Intel Optane Memory Ready
– M.2 Genie: Setting up RAID for M.2 much easier and faster
– Lightning USB: Double bandwidth, supports USB 3.1 Gen2 Type A + Type C
– X-Boost: Great tool to boost your USB & Storage performance
– Double ESD Protection: Double layer grounding motherboard mounting holes
– Military Class 5, Guard-Pro: Latest evolution in high quality components for best protection and efficiency
– Click BIOS 5: Award-winning BIOS with high resolution scalable font, favorites and search function

Packaging
The Z270 SLI PLUS comes in a rather plain black retail box. On the front it of course lets us know we do have the Z270 SLI PLUS and some of the main features are listed like Intel LAN, Lightning USB, Turbo M.2, and VR Boost.

MSI Z270 SLI PLUS Motherboard

Flipping over to the back we have a full picture of the motherboard and some of the main features are highlighted. There is also an I/O overview and a full list of specifications.

MSI Z270 SLI PLUS Motherboard

Getting everything out of the box we of course have the motherboard and accessories. Being that this board is more of a no frills motherboard there is not much in terms of accessories. There are two SATA cables, I/O shield, user’s guide, quick installation guide, and a driver and utility CD.

MSI Z270 SLI PLUS Motherboard

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