Review

MSI X370 Gaming Pro Carbon Review

With the new AMD Ryzen processors in the market, we are receiving quite a number of AMD X370 chipset motherboards many of which are specifically designed for overclocking or that combine features which both overclockers, enthusiasts and gamers in mind, but today we are reviewing a MSI solution to high end oriented enthusiast gamers with Top-level features. The MSI X370 Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard a feature packed full ATX board supporting new Ryzen processors, fastest DDR-4 RAMs out there, Audio Boost 4 audio with Nahimic 2, USB 3.1 Gen2 ,Twin Turbo M.2 with steel armor, MSI Mystic Light and more.

Now let's see what this new AMD X370 chipset based MSI gaming board have for us.

Features

• Supports AMD^® RYZEN Series Processors and 7th Gen A-series / Athlon™ Processors for socket AM4
• Supports DDR4-3200+(OC) Memory
• DDR4 Boost with Steel Armor: Give your DDR4 memory a performance boost
• VR Ready and VR Boost: Best virtual reality game experience without latency, reduces motion sickness
• Mystic Light and Mystic Light Sync: 16.8 million colors /17 effects controlled in one click with GAMING APP or mobile devices.
• Lightning Fast Game experience: Turbo M.2, M.2 Shield, Lightning USB 3.1 Gen2
• Audio Boost 4 with Nahimic 2: Reward your ears with studio grade sound quality for the most immersive gaming experience
• GAMING LAN with LAN Protect, powered by Intel® : The best online gaming experience with lowest latency and bandwidth management
• Military Class 4, Guard-Pro: Latest evolution in high quality components for best protection and efficiency
• MULTI-GPU: With Steel Armor PCI-E slots. Supports NVIDIA SLI™ & AMD Crossfire™
• In-Game Weapons: Game Boost, GAMING Hotkey, X-Boost, Xsplit Gamecaster
• EZ Debug LED: Easiest way to troubleshoot
• Click BIOS 5: Award-winning BIOS with high resolution scalable font, favorites and search function
• GAMING CERTIFIED: 24-hour on- and offline game and motherboard testing by eSports players
• WHQL certified for Windows 10

Specifications

Package

Looking at the front of the box, we see MSI logo with motherboard model no. in big at center of the box. At the rear of the box, we find that MSI goes into great detail on the specifications of the motherboard

Inside the box

Looks

Board is a solid build on a black PCB with white line graphics over the PCB and heatsink, giving whole board a great appearance and wild look. I like the whole theme very attractive..

Layout

Detailed layout of board.

1. AMD AM4 socket, supporting New AMD Ryzen CPU.

2. 4 DIMM Dual channel DDR4 memory slots with full Steel Armor supporting max. 64GB at 2133MHz in normal and up to 3200MHz when OC.

3. ATX Power connector (24-pin EATXPWR) along with EZ Debug LED

4. ATX CPU Power Connector (8-pin ATX12V).

5. Back Panel Connectors : PS/2 keyboard/ mouse combo port, 2 x USB 2.0 Type-A ports, DVI-D port, HDMIâ„¢ port, 4 x USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A ports, LAN (RJ45) port, USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A port, USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port, 5 x OFC audio jacks, Optical S/PDIF OUT connector

6. 7. 14.CPU fan connector, Water-pump-fan connector and 4 x system fan connectors

8. Two front USB 3 Port.

9.

10. System Front panel Connector

11. 2 x USB 2.0 Connectors

12. 13. RGB LED strip extension cable headers

15. Front panel Audio connector

16. 17. Dual PCIe Gen3 x4 M.2 connector

18. Expansion Slots : 2 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots (PCIE_2, PCIE_4)- RYZEN series processors support x16/x0, x8/x8 mode, 1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 slot (PCIE_6, supports x4 mode), 3 x PCIe 2.0 x1 slots

Removing Heat-sinks

MSI used dense aluminum heatsink in this board. Heatsinks base is having thermal pad installed. VRM heatsink are secured in place using screws and spacers.

Component Layout

Let's now see what all components MSI have planned for this board.

1. 2. 8 + 2stage CPU voltage regulator circuit uses pair of NIKOS PK616 and PK632 MOSFETS with combined rating of 50A controlled by RT8894A PWM Controller.

3. Single-Phase digital memory power supply section for DDR4 memories

4. 5. ASMedia ASM2142 is PCIe-to-two-port USB 3.1 controllers and Pair of ASMedia ASM1543 single chip solution, bridging the USB3.1 to Serial ATA host interface with highly integrated SuperSpeed USB3.0 interface.

6. Intel Gigabit LAN solution.

7. The nuvoTon NCT 6795D chip provides the super I/O functions, such as fan control and system monitoring

8. MSI equipped this board with Audio boost 4 audio solution with ALC 1220 120dB SNR HD Audio codec at the heart.

ALC 1220 120dB SNR HD Audio - The ALC1220 is a high-performance multi-channel High Definition Audio Codec with up to 120dB SNR for crystal clear audio along with premium quality CHEMI-CON audio capacitors for a warmer sound and OP1652 op-amp as buffer.

A semi-transparent line on motherboard separates the whole audio section from the rest of the board in order to minimize interference. So listening under Stereo mode produces high audio quality with excellent dynamic range.

RightMark Audio Analyzer (RMAA) suite is used for testing MSI High Definition audio against Asus Xonar U7 External Sound card. You can see clearly the difference between Noise level, dynamic rang and Total harmonic distortion percentage produced by MSI High Definition audio.

RMAA Asus Xonar U7

RMAA MSI Audio

9. AMD X370 Chipset.

10. MSI uses MXIC MX 2SL12873F a capacity of 128 Mb for storing UEFI BIOS.

11. Renesas - R5F104ACA (ISP) microcontroller used for RBG LED control function.

Testing

BIOS

Bundled Softwares

Benchmarks

Overclocking

Power Consumption

Wattage reading as per displayed by APC Pro 1000VA (Model no. BR1000G-IN) UPS.

Pros

• Great Looks
• Lot of bundled Software
• High Quality Audio
• RGB header

Cons

• Nil

Conclusion

MSI has done a great job in designing this board. At a price tag of Rs.18500(approx.), this board offers more than any other product in this range and segment. The board delivers solid and consistent performance throughout our testing. Board gives great competition to other high end X370 boards

And with the new BIOS updates, you will have more faster RAM support, which makes this board one of the best suitable for gamer and high-level system builders with new AMD Ryzen CPU and make it worthy of our PC TeK Reviews EXCELLENCE Award.

Manufacturers Info

Thanks.

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