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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MarkieGcolor - Tuesday, May 2, 2017 - link
I like how the asrock has a pice slot above the gpu slot. Why don't more motherboards have more space between the cpu connected slots for sli/crossfire? I'll never buy another board that doesn't have 3 slot spacing for cpu's again!HollyDOL - Tuesday, May 2, 2017 - link
Usually that top PCIe 1x slot is where my audio card gets seated. It used to be recommended due to latency, no clue whether that reason still holds though, it became quite a custom for me.ImSpartacus - Tuesday, May 2, 2017 - link
Do you actually anticipate using sli or crossfire?I'm beginning to get the feeling that they are antiquated.
tsk2k - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link
The distance from the top PCIe x16 slot on the MSI to the CPU is the same as ASrock.GT710M - Tuesday, May 2, 2017 - link
so much detailsATC9001 - Tuesday, May 2, 2017 - link
Why no overclocking for a comparison?BurntMyBacon - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link
The article specifies the MSI board's VRM circuit as a 10 phase design and the ASRock as an 8(6+2) phase design. However, visual inspection (see photo of the CPU socket area with VRM heatsink removed) reveals both boards have the same number of chokes and MOSFETs under those VRM heatsinks. I presume I must be missing something. Please explain.blacksun123 - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link
From the test result, ASRock's power efficiency is much much better than MSI.blacksun123 - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link
Does MSI provide SLI bridge for this MB? Does it really support SLI? It costs USD$25~40 to buy a SLI HB bridge in the market.zafos888 - Saturday, September 9, 2017 - link
Amazing job on the reviewCan anyone tell me the height of the heatsinks around the CPU?
I want to use a Noctua D15 cooler and I dont know if the rams will fit underneath it, so I was thinking about rotatig it so the fan will be on top of the heatsinks instead of the rams. The space under the fan is 32mm. Thanks in advance