Kaby Lake Motherboards at $140: MSI Z270 SLI Plus vs. ASRock Z270 Killer SLI
by E. Fylladitakis on May 1, 2017 10:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- MSI
- ASRock
- SLI
- Kaby Lake
- Z270
- Z270 SLI PLUS
- Z270 Killer SLI
Test Bed and Setup
Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives in essence an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, overriding memory sub-timings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.
For reference, both the MSI Z270 SLI Plus and the ASRock Z270 Killer SLI had multi-core acceleration enabled by default. We tested the MSI Z270 SLI Plus with the 1.4 BIOS and the ASRock Z270 Killer SLI with the 2.00 BIOS.
| Test Setup | |
| Processor | Intel Core i7-7700K (ES, Retail Stepping), 91W, $340 4 Cores, 8 Threads, 4.2 GHz (4.5 GHz Turbo) |
| Motherboards | MSI Z270 SLI Plus ASRock Z270 Killer SLI |
| Cooling | Alphacool Eisbaer 240 |
| Power Supply | Corsair AX1200i Platinum PSU |
| Memory | G.Skill DDR4-2400 C15 2x16 GB 1.2V |
| Memory Settings | XMP @ 2400 |
| Video Cards | MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB (1150/1202 Boost) |
| Hard Drive | Crucial MX200 1TB |
| Case | Open Test Bed |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit SP1 |
Many thanks to Alphacool, Corsair, G.Skill, MSI and Crucial for contributing to our test bed.
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A5 - Monday, May 1, 2017 - link
Nice article, more mainstream reviews are always appreciated.austinsguitar - Monday, May 1, 2017 - link
people need to realize that z270 and intel are still a great buy for regular users. its not a bad investment. i just prey that 6core comes in time to consumers.ddriver - Monday, May 1, 2017 - link
Aside from the fact it is highly unlikely it will accept more than a single generation of processors.Cygni - Monday, May 1, 2017 - link
Seems pretty likely that Coffee Lake is intended to be compatible with Z270.ddriver - Monday, May 1, 2017 - link
That would be a new one for intel ;) If that happens, I guess "competition". For years now, intel has been artificially limiting chipset compatibility to squeeze extra chipset sales by obstructing upgrades.ronnie.d.davidson@outlook.com - Sunday, May 7, 2017 - link
Thats not what I've been reading....New Intel Coffee Lake 6 Core CPU's will need the 300 Series Chipset which means....New Motherboard !ronnie.d.davidson@outlook.com - Sunday, May 7, 2017 - link
The Inter Coffee Lake 6 Core CPU's will need the 300 Series Chipsets which means...New Motherboard !fanofanand - Monday, May 1, 2017 - link
Totally agree, more reviews of the volume pieces would benefit far more readers. I won't be buying either of these but at least now I know why.Arbie - Monday, May 1, 2017 - link
It's incredible that they can market something so complex, with so many precision parts, materials, and process steps - not to mention all the ICs - for a delivered price of $140! These are the benefits to us of mass production and sadly low foreign wages. Given that I'd use such a mobo heavily for hours every day, for years, I'd willingly pay more if I knew the workers got more.rocky12345 - Monday, May 1, 2017 - link
Nice write up Thank You. I just looked the MSI board up at Memory Express in Canada it goes for $209.99 CAD which sounds about right after exchange rate.