Hardware MSI Z170A Gaming M5 Review

Very, very similar to the M7. Only a few subtle differences.

 

Very disappointing on the overclocking side

 

It's worth noting that stuff like this gets fixed with BIOS updates and will be after this. Like any review, products (generally speaking) are improved over time with better updates to fix any issues or performance drops so I wouldn't expect this M5 to struggle getting 4.80GHz on bit-tech's CPU sample in a month's time for example.

 

Ended up getting an M7 board, but could have settled for an M5, but a good bundle offer swung it for me at the time. Though yet to get around to building the system it is for as got others to finish first.

 

What's the point of releasing a product with an underdeveloped BIOS? I doubt everyone's going to rally around and re-review the board post BIOS update and there's no way I am buying a board based on a promise that a BIOS update is the panacea to sub standard (by comparison) overclocking.

I've not had the pleasure of finding an MSI board that overclocks better over time with BIOS updates, in fact one of the reasons I now steer away from MSI is the appalling post release firmware support - my experience has been what's bad out the box is usually bad forever.

Overclocking is usually a result of the sum of it's parts rather than firmware, the weakest link is the weakest link which simply can't be fixed without mainboard component upgrades.

I hope I am wrong, but I stopped gambling on 'updates' fixing things.

 

I wouldn't say it's an underdeveloped BIOS as it's just the overclocking stability that may need a quick check and it'll likely be down to an annoying compatibility issue no doubt.

I have both the M5 and M7 in my office right now and both can overclock our i7 sample to 4.80GHz stable at 1.37v. So it's not a limit on the M5, it'll just be something that needs optimisation in the BIOS for a whole host of different setups. Sometimes it can be down to the editors way of overclocking the motherboard in the BIOS. I very much doubt that's the case here as Antony is very well adept at all motherboards but there are those editors out there who may prefer to do things a certain way in the BIOS that there used to on their own preference of motherboard brand (which is fair enough) and may not be the best way to overclock it on another brand.

Overall the M5 is a very nice board with a great feature-set. While the two ASUS boards could overclock 200MHz more they are both £30-90 more expensive than the MSI. When you really look at the benchmark results in detail the scores where the M5 lost out are not that far behind the two ASUS boards even with a 200MHz slower overclock. Had the M5 clocked to 4.80GHz for bit-tech, we could have seen better chart topping results beating the more expensive ASUS boards.

 

It's plausible, the only thing you could change in BIOS to OC better would be a "strap" setting, truth is to get to where the others are for example that strap would have to be increased, the knock on effect will be latency which would in return effect clock for clock performance.

But you're guessing that's the case rather than stating that's the case, there's no guarantee you're right, compatibility would be an issue for everything not just an OC surely?.

That said, proof is in the pudding, out the box, if the flashing the BIOS is the first thing you have to do to get it to OC as much as the others (again I doubt it will get fixed in a timely fashion if at all) it's hardly great, although for some it's not a deal breaker.

I say all of that hoping to be proved wrong (nothing is more loyal than a satisfied complainant), but having had my fingers burned before regarding empty promises of BIOS updates to address such issues, you can understand why I'll pass on this one.

 

I see only one way to sort the argument. Tom, send me an M5 to compare to the M7!

(Just kidding, but I'll review it if you wish.)