MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium AM4 Motherboard Review

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Since we have already reviewed two of the three motherboards that AMD handpicked to send to reviewers for the Ryzen launch, it only makes sense for us to review the third, the ASUS Crosshair VI Hero. However, while that day will come, today we are focused on reviewing the most expensive AMD AM4 motherboard on the market right now, the MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium.

While "most expensive" is often not a great position to be in, it really all depends on whether you can backup the asking price with sufficient value-added features. Historically, MSI's XPower motherboards have distinguished themselves from the pack not only by their iconic metallic coated PCB, but by adding unique features and using very high quality components at every level. However, given the fact that this model is currently retailing for $300 USD / $400 CAD - a $50 to $100 USD price premium over other flagship AM4 motherboards - our expectations are understandably very high.

Looking at the fundamentals, we see that this model has a promising 10-phase CPU power design, two steel-reinforced PCI-E 3.0 x16 slots with support for 2-way SLI or CrossFireX, two PCI-E 2.0 x1 slots, and one mechanical PCI-E x16 slot that actually operates at PCI-E 2.0 x4. When it comes to connectivity, there are six SATA 6Gb/s ports, one U.2 port, and two M.2 slots, though only one can operate at full-speed PCI-E 3.0 x4. With USB capabilities built into both the CPU and the chipset, that form of connectivity is well-represented with two full-speed USB 3.1 Gen2 ports (one Type-A and one Type-C), one USB 3.1 Gen2 header, four USB 3.0 ports, two USB 3.0 headers, three USB 2.0 ports, and two USB 2.0 headers for a grand total of nineteen possible USB ports.

The Audio Boost 4 onboard audio solution is based on the latest Realtek ALC1220 codec, and is paired with a Texas Instruments op-amp and Nippon Chemi-Con audio-grade capacitors. As has become an industry standard, there is also physical PCB-level audio separation line that protects the audio components from EMI. Given the gaming focus of this motherboard, MSI have also licensed the feature-rich Nahamic 2 audio suite, which will give gamers and budget audiophiles a great deal of tweaking capabilities. Speaking of gamers and budget, those who plan on installing a Bristol Ridge or upcoming Zen-based APU will be able to do so, since this motherboard has DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 2.0 video outputs, this latter feature is a truly unexpected bonus. Frankly though, we would implore you to find a cheaper motherboard if you're planning an APU-based system.

Unsurprisingly, MSI's Mystic Light LED lighting feature has been implemented on this model, but not in RGB form. Instead, the onboard LEDs are only one color - white - and can be manipulated with a choice of eight effects. Not only that, but you can't control the various lighting sections independently, they are all linked together. This is a bold choice from MSI for such a pricey motherboard. Having said that, there is an RGB LED header that supports two RGB light strips, so users can definitely take matters into their own hands and create a multi-coloured system if desired.

Last, but not least, this is the first X370 motherboard that we have reviewed that comes with voltage read points, which is a great addition for serious overclockers. For those with more down-to-earth ambitions, this model also features a physical Game Boost Knob that allows users a quick and easy way of literally manually overclocking without ever having to enter the UEFI or using any piece of software. It's a pretty great idea, especially since it has eight performance profiles, some of which are very aggressive.

We will be testing all of these features and more in the coming pages, so if your pockets run deep and you're interested in this motherboard, definitely keep on reading!

 

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Packaging & Accessories

Packaging & Accessories

Now that we have gone over the X370 XPower's features and specifications in the introduction, it is time to examine the packaging and then crack open the box to take a look at the bundled accessories. Let's check it out:

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As you might expect from a Titanium Edition motherboard, this model ships in a packaging that features a shiny metallic sheen that exhibits essentially every shade of grey depending on how you look at it. Befitting the high-end nature of this model, this packaging also has a side flap and a window that reveals the motherboard itself.

The back of the box is filled with useful information regarding all of the interesting features that have been packed onto this model, as well as a full specifications list and a handy rear I/O panel diagram.

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When you open the packaging, you are greeted with an inner box that contains two separate sections. The top half holds the motherboard protected by a plastic shield, and the bottom half contains the bundled accessories, software and documentation.

The motherboard also has a foam pad under it to protect the solder points, traces, and any rear-mounted components.

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Although there is nothing unique or superfluous - an SLI HB bridge would have been nice - MSI have added a Gaming Series case badge, a custom nicely labelled rear I/O cover, six silver SATA cables, a simple 2-way SLI bridge, and a RGB LED light strip extension cable that also acts as a Y-splitter so you can power two light strips from the single header. Rounding things out are the product manual, quick installation guide, product registration card, a driver and software DVD, and some SATA label stickers.

 

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A Closer Look at the X370 XPower Gaming Titanium

A Closer Look at the X370 XPower Gaming Titanium

The first thing that sticks out when you first look at the X370 XPower Gaming Titanium in-person is the PCB. While it might look a little off-white in the above picture, some of the close-ups down below will better show off the cool shimmery metallic coating that covers the entire surface of this motherboard. The plastic shroud covering the whole left side of the motherboard, as well as the inserts on the MOSFET and chipset heatsinks, also have a metallic quality to them, but they are more distinctly silver. Overall, whether you love or hate the aesthetic, it's an original concept not matched by any other motherboard series.

Following the general theme, there are also a lot of metal elements, like the 'Steel Armor' reinforcement for the DDR4 and PCI-E slots, the decorative metallic covers on the M.2 and U.2 connectors, and one of course the M.2 Shield. Given the price of this motherboard, they really should have included two M.2 Shields.

The overall layout is fantastic with all the numerous ports, connectors, buttons, and headers thoughtfully placed on every edge. In an ideal world, we would have liked to see the full-speed M.2 slot - the one directly under the primary PCI-E x16 slot - placed elsewhere, perhaps swapped with the slower secondary M.2 slot. Our reasoning is just that graphics cards obviously spew out a lot of heat so it is a good idea to mount a high-performance M.2 SSD away from such a heat source, since solid state drives tend to throttle when running too hot and that reduces performance. When it comes to dimensions, the X370 XPower adheres to the standard full-size ATX form factor - 305 mm x 244 mm / 12.0-in x 9.6-in - so there are no compatibility issues to worry about with any properly designed case.

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One of the main reasons people buy MSI XPower series motherboards is for the overbuilt VRM that these models are known for. The X370 XPower Gaming has been outfitted a ten-phase power design that utilizes an Infineon IR35201 digital PWM controller and five Infineon IR3598 dual drivers/doublers. While the PWM controller is actually operating in 6+2 phase mode - which is to say six phases for the cores and two phases for the SOC - MSI have used two of the IR3598's to double the two SOC phases, which is how we end up with a ten-phase 6+4 configuration.

Now these two Infineon parts are highly lauded, and are essentially as good as money can buy when it comes to high-performance voltage regulating components. In fact, the IR35201 is used on both the ASRock X370 Taichi and the GIGABYTE AX370-Gaming 5 that we reviewed earlier. It is a fantastic part, and that why it's so bewildering to us that MSI would choose to pair it with some middle-of-the-road NIKOS MOSFETs. The configuration on this model is that each core voltage phases consists of one highside NIKOS PK616BA FET paired with two lowside NIKOS PK632BA FETs, while the SOC phases get one of each. This means 26 MOSFETs in total, which sounds impressive. However, the budget-oriented $100 MSI 970 Gaming AM3+ motherboard had 32 of these exact same MOSFETs, so they clearly aren't premium components.

Now to be clear, this VRM is definitely overkill for the type of load it will see, since you will hit CPU frequency limitations before getting anywhere near the power delivery limits, but that's not the point. Those paying $300 USD/$400 CAD deserve the most capable and most efficient top-tier components in every respect. By comparison, the Z270 XPower has top-of-the-line Infineon PowIRstage IR3555 series MOSFETs and over a dozen tantalum capacitors for the output filter. The X370 XPower has four tantalum capacitors. It seems to us that MSI are charging titanium prices, but selling recycled aluminium.

On the plus side, although this motherboard doesn't have the "Ti" chokes that we have grown accustomed to, it has brand new premium chokes that are really cool looking from up-close. Also in the plus column, the tremendously beefy MOSFET heatsinks that are attached by a heatpipe should be up to the task of cooling the hot running NIKOS MOSFETs.

Since this is MSI's flagship X370 motherboard and it is aimed at overclockers, it not only has one 8-pin CPU power connector but a supplementary 4-pin CPU power connector as well. However, once again, inherent Ryzen frequency limitations ensure that the extra 4-pin connector will never be needed. And more to the point, this CPU VRM could never handle the amount of power that even an 8-pin connector could deliver. It seems to us like the 4-pin connector is more of an aesthetic/marketing add-on than anything else.

Last, but not least, in our observation of the CPU socket area, this motherboard has two fan headers near the CPU socket, one is the usual CPU fan header, while the header labeled PUMP_FAN1 has been designed for water pumps and it can supply up to 2 amps of current. All of the fan headers on this motherboard are fully controllable via both DC and PWM fan control modes, and the motherboard itself can even detect and configure the fans. You may notice that there are two LEDs near those two fan headers, and they are there to indicate the current fan control mode. Red is PWM mode and green is DC mode. Overall, it is a brilliant little feature.

Oh, by the way, we no idea what the weird blue header is or what it is for. It is not in the manual either, so we think that it should remain a mystery.

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The four DDR4 slots are fed by a two-phase VRM, comprised of a Powervation PV3205 digital PWM controller and more NIKOS MOSFETs. These memory slots support up to 64GB of total system memory, and they have been certified for overclocked memory speeds of up to DDR4-3200. Make sure to check out our Overclocking Results section to see whether we were able to hit that level. MSI still haven't adopted the whole "clipless on one side" concept, but that's not a huge issue for us since as you'll see in our Installation section there are no clearance issues with the back of the primary graphics card.

As you may have noticed, MSI have put metal shielding on each of the memory slots. This was done for largely aesthetic purposes, since this shielding in no way strengthens the slots. In fact, as we demonstrated in a previous review this metal shielding is actually very flimsy and makes no actual contact with the slots.

MSI have also added two little usability elements for the memory slots. There is a little silkscreened label on the PCB to tell users which memory slots to use when installing the first two modules, and there are LEDs for each memory slots to tell users which slots are occupied/currently working.

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To the left of the 24-pin ATX power connector is one of the two internal USB 3.0 headers, while to the right of it are the EZ Debug LEDs that light up if there is an issue that caused a boot failure or non-detection of the CPU, graphics card, or RAM.

While we are on the topic of diagnostics, you will obviously spot the handy debug LED in the top-right corner of the motherboard. You may notice a fan header labeled PUMP_FAN1, that is a special header that has been designed for water pumps and it can supply up to 2 amps of current. All six of the fan headers on this motherboard support both DC and PWM fan control modes.

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The X370 chipset can output a decent amount of heat, and MSI have done a good job of not only adding a beefy heatsink, but ensuring that the heatsink makes excellent contact thanks to a very secure mounting method.

While much of the high-end competition offers between eight and ten SATA 6Gb/s ports, MSI have opted to only included six on this model. All of the SATA ports are running off of the X370 chipset, so they natively support RAID 0/1/10. Interestingly, they also added a U.2 port capable of up to a theoretical 4GB/s of bandwidth, which we think is largely pointless since the only compatible drive is still the Intel 750 Series. Since the U.2 port and primary M.2 slot share PCI-E lanes, if you install a PCI-E SSD into the M.2 slot, the U.2 port will be automatically disabled.

Directly below the primary PCI-E x16 slot is one of the two M.2 slots, and the only one to feature a full-speed PCI-E 3.0 x4 interface thanks to its direct connection to the processor. It has a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 4GB/s, and supports SATA, PCI-E, and PCI-E NVMe M.2 solid state drives that measure up to 110mm long.

As we explain in more detail in our M.2 feature test page, the secondary M.2 slot is slower than the primary one since it gets it four PCI-E 2.0 (instead of 3.0) lanes from the X370 chipset. As a result, it has a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 2GB/s, but in real-life you are unlikely to ever see much above 1.6GB/s. Nevertheless, this slot fully supports PCI-E NVMe, PCI-E, and SATA M.2 solid state drives up to 80mm long. If this M.2 slot is occupied, the third PCI-E x16 (x4 electrical) slot will be disabled. If both the PCI-E slot and M.2 slot are occupied installed simultaneously, the M.2 will remain functional since it has a higher priority.

 

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A Closer Look at the X370 XPower Gaming Titanium pt.2

A Closer Look at the X370 XPower Gaming Titanium pt.2

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The lower-right corner of the motherboard is packed with goodness. As you can see, this is where you will find the Game Boost Knob, as well as the power and reset buttons. We won't go great detail about the knob here - we'll save that for the Overclocking Results section - but basically it allows users a quick and easy way of manually overclocking without ever having to enter the UEFI or using any piece of software. It is a cool, functional addition to this motherboard, and as you will see later on, it does work very well.

Directly above the Game Boost Knob is the Slow Mode Booting jumper, which can be useful for LN2 overclockers since it will drop the CPU frequency during boot up to enhance system stability and ensure that Windows loads without crashing. Next to the angled USB 3.0 header you will find the BIOS FLASHBACK+ button. Pressing this button activates the BIOS FLASHBACK+ function, which will we explain a little later.

Not only does the X370 XPower have a unique angled USB 3.0 header, but it also has a rare USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C header. This header is made possible by both the native USB 3.1 Gen2 functionality built into the X370 chipset and an ASMedia ASM1543 Type-C switch. This means that this motherboard will be able to provide high-speed USB connectivity to the front panel of any future case you buy.

One cool addition that most people miss is the five little voltage read points that MSI have added below the chipset heatsink. While the CPU core voltage and northbridge/SOC voltage read points are interesting, we would have rather had memory voltage instead of the more esoteric 1P8V and VDDP.

The bottom edge of motherboard is where you will find two USB 2.0 headers, one system fan headers, and the front panel audio header. The JLED1 pins are for the RGB LED header, which is where you can plug in two 5050 RGB LED light strips and have them fully powered by the motherboard and controlled by the LED utility.

The 6-pin PCI-E power connector is there to help ensure that the PCI-E x16 slots get all the power that they require in a 3-way CrossFireX configuration or just when multiple cards are installed for mining. NVIDIA's SLI technology does not work on a x4 slot, which is what the bottom PCI-E x16 slot actually operates at.

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Ryzen processors support sixteen PCI-E 3.0 lanes for graphics purposes. These lanes are divided across two separate PCI-E x16 slots thanks to a handful of ASMedia ASM1480 PCI-E 3.0 switches on the back of the motherboard. The third mechanical PCI-E x16 slot operates at PCI-E 2.0 x4 mode, and as mentioned previously it shares bandwidth with the secondary M.2 slot.

In a regular single graphics card setup, the first PCI-E x16 slot will obviously operate at PCI-E 3.0 x16. In a dual graphics card configuration, the first and second slots will operate at PCI-E 3.0 x8, which will still provide ample bandwidth for even the highest-end GPUs. This motherboard supports both two-way SLI and three-way CrossFireX. Triple AMDs GPUs are supported because CrossFire can function on an x4 slot, whereas SLI cannot.

The two primary PCI-E x16 slots have been mechanically reinforced with a steel cover, as well as additional anchor points.

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The Audio Boost 4 onboard audio is based on the new Realtek ALC1220 ten-channel HD audio codec, which has been paired to a very competent Texas Instruments OP1652 op-amp, and over a dozen Nippon Chemi-Con audio-grade capacitors. The op-amp is a dedicated headphone amplifier, which not only has the ability to power 600 ohm headphones but also automatically detects the optimal impedance for your headphones and adjusts the output to ensure the possible best sound quality.

We are glad to see that there is a clear PCB isolation line protecting the audio section from electromagnetic interference (EMI). The white LEDs on the underside of the motherboard glow through that isolation line, and match the white LEDs placed throughout the motherboard.

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The X370 XPower has a good assortment of ports on its rear I/O panel, and there is even a button. Starting from left to right, there is a combo keyboard/mouse PS/2 port, the Clear CMOS button, a USB 2.0/BIOS Flashback+ port, DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 2.0(!) video outputs, four USB 3.0 ports, an Intel-powered gigabit LAN port, USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A and USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C ports, and five gold-plated analog audio jacks and one S/PDIF output.

BIOS FLASHBACK+ port: Plug the USB flash drive that contains the MSI.ROM file into the BIOS FLASHBACK+ port on rear I/O panel, and press the BIOS FLASHBACK+ button. Once the BIOS FLASHBACK+ LED - which is next to the button - stops flashing, the process has been completed.

Despite the fact that we doubt that an APU will ever find its way to such an expensive motherboard, the inclusion of an HDMI 2.0 video output is pretty neat. The HDMI 1.4 port found on typical motherboards only supports 4K at up to 24Hz, while this motherboard can handle 4K at 60Hz. Since HDMI 2.0 is not natively supported on this platform, a pricey Texas Instruments SN75DP159 chip is responsible for this feature. To be honest, we would have gladly traded in that HDMI port for a second LAN port, which is an odd omission on such a high-end motherboard.

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So what's powering all these ports? Well starting from the top left there is an Intel i211-AT gigabit LAN controller, which is an excellent chip that is very well supported across a wide range of operating systems. Since the two native USB 3.1 Gen2 ports has been directed towards the internal USB 3.1 Gen2 header, MSI have added an excellent high-performance ASMedia ASM2142 10Gb/s controller to power the USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A and Type-C ports on the rear I/O panel. Having said that, an ASMedia ASM1543 switch is still needed in order to actually support the Type-C port.

The Texas Instruments SN75DP159 is a DisplayPort1.2-to-HDMI 2.0 converter that is also the chip responsible for the HDMI 2.0 video output, while the Nuvoton NCT6795D Super I/O monitoring controller handles system monitoring, fan control, and provides legacy support for the PS/2 port.

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As we have come to expect from a motherboard in this price range, all of the heatsinks and the plastic shroud are attached with metal screws.

Aside from the Infineon IR3598 dual drivers/doublers and ASMedia ASM1480 PCI-E 3.0 switches, there is not much on the back of the X370 XPower. There is some silkscreening highlighting the different gaming-related manufacturer brands that have certified this motherboard.

We also get to see the white LEDs that snake along the clear PCB audio separation line. These LEDs shine their light through to match the white LEDs placed throughout the motherboard.

 

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Hardware Installation

Hardware Installation

In the Hardware Installation section we examine how major components fit on the motherboard, and whether there are any serious issues that may affect installation and general functionality. Specifically, we are interested in determining whether there is adequate clearance in all critical areas.

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While we have never really encountered any clearance issues when installing an all-in-one liquid cooler - like this Corsair Hydro H110i - on a full-size ATX motherboard, you will want to be careful on what side you place the hoses since they can get pretty darn close to the memory modules. By the way, the mounting hardware for the Hydro basically just clips and screws onto the stock plastic brackets that come pre-mounted to all AM4 motherboards.

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This motherboard has a wide open CPU socket area and its MOSFET heatsinks aren't particularly tall, so installing any type of heatsink on this motherboard should be a breeze. No matter what mounting hardware your cooler comes with, this motherboard can handle it without any clearance issues.

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When we occupied the memory slot nearest to the CPU socket, even when using standard height memory modules our Prolimatech Mega Shadow's fan clips still made contact with the heat spreaders. Moving the memory modules to the proper slots fixed that issue, but just barely.

When we swapped in very tall G.Skill Trident Z memory modules, there were clearance issues even in the farthest memory slots, and it did prevent the installation of the fan clip on one side. The solution is obviously to find another way hold the fan in place, or to mount it on the other side of the heatsink, both of which are less than ideal. This is an issue that we encounter on quite a few motherboards though, so we aren't going to knock the X370 XPower for it.

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Due to the expansion slot layout, there is a pretty decent gap between the DDR4 memory slots and the back of the graphics card, so there is no need to take out the GPU before installing/uninstalling memory modules. The 24-pin ATX power connector and the 4-pin and 8-pin CPU power connectors are all ideally placed, so that makes assembling and disassembling the system just a tad easier.

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This motherboard will easily hold one or two dual-slot graphics cards without difficulty, though the cards will obviously extend past the motherboard length-wise. If you install a dual-slot expansion card in the third PCI-E x16 slot, it will overhang all the headers on the bottom edge of the motherboard. The gap between the first and second graphics card is wide enough that a slim non-metallic object can easily be used to reach the second card's PCI-E slot release clip.

The six 90-degree SATA ports and the single U.2 port are obviously accessible no matter how many and what type of graphics cards are installed.

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Installing an M.2 SSD in the primary or secondary M.2 slot is simple. Obviously, any dual-slot expansion card installed in either the primary or secondary PCI-E x16 slot will make the M.2 slot under it inaccessible, so that graphics card will need to be removed before installing/uninstalling the solid state drive.

 

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UEFI Explored

UEFI Explored

MSI have unsurprisingly decided to carry forward their well-liked Click Bios 5. In fact, the overall layout and design of this UEFI has remained basically unchanged since Click Bios 2, so clearly MSI are the brand of choice for those who like consistency from one product to the next. The UEFI is divided across two distinct modes. The EZ Mode is simplified and features a mouse-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) for basic tasks, while the Advanced Mode has all the settings, options, and features that you could ever want. The one important setting that it does lack is any way of controlling the onboard LEDs, you must install the Gaming APP in order to manage that feature. There should at least be an on/off option for those who really don't want anything to do with RGB LED lighting.

In both modes, the top third of the screen is occupied by a row that contains a basic overview of your system (CPU temperature, motherboard temperature, CPU & RAM type, size and frequencies, date and time, etc) as well as a drag and drop boot priority list. While it does contain extremely handy information, this section carries over from one page to the next, taking up a massive amount of real-estate.

In the top-left corner are also two large buttons: Game Boost and XMP. The Game Boost feature is basically the same as what MSI used to call OC Genie so with a simple push of this button the BIOS will immediately overclock your system and do so in a completely hands-off manner. This model offers eight Game Boost modes, and it will overclock a Ryzen 7 1800X from a mere 4.10Ghz all the way up to 4.40GHz. If that's not the enough, or if you just want to higher memory speeds, the XMP button enables your memory kit's XMP profile. Together these two features will remove two of the main reasons for entering the Advanced mode.

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When you first enter the Click Bios 5 you will be greeted with a single screen that uses large icons and simplistic language. This "EZ Mode" is instantly responsive to your input commands and there is almost no noticeable lag. They did however include a few transition delays when switching from one section to another, but this is an intentional design feature that makes the new UEFI more pleasing to use.

As the name suggests the EZ Mode of Click Bios 5 boasts a simplified layout and features a mouse-friendly interface that prioritizes ease of use and navigation. It obviously does not have all the functionality of the MSI’s “advanced” mode. However, MSI has taken the EZ Mode and made it into a more powerful section than what even ASUS offers in their EZ Mode.

In addition to being able to use MSI's fan tuning wizard, change boot priority, implement XMP RAM profiles, and even turn on Game Boost (or what was once called OC Genie), you can also access a fully enabled hardware monitor to help troubleshoot common issues. There are also options for Fast Boot, turning on or off the Ethernet or onboard sound controllers, configuring the SATA devices to use (or not use) AHCI/RAID mode and even view a BIOS log to review any changes previously made. This last feature is also perfect when troubleshooting issues that suddenly occur after a reboot. On top of all that you can also enter M-Flash to update your BIOS firmware, and access your own custom Favorites page, albeit it is empty by default, all without ever having to enter the actual Advanced Mode.

If the EZ Mode doesn't have the versatility that you are looking for, it is time to move on to the Advanced mode:

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In the Advanced mode, the bottom two-thirds of the screen is divided into two columns with three rows each and a center space. The left and right columns are dedicated to navigation for Settings, OC, M-Flash, OC Profile, Hardware Monitor, and Board Explorer with the first three being located in the left hand column and the last three in the right. Because the top of the screen and the two sides are occupied with static information or menus, that center space is not huge, and that is less than ideal since that is where you will be viewing and tweaking all the settings.

The Settings menu is the section where you will find the bulk of the BIOS's settings. The System Status sub-menu meanwhile lists some basic system information, including the date and time, standard storage devices, BIOS version, a few processor cache tidbits and the amount of memory installed. The Advanced sub-menu is also where you can enable/disable or just find all the various settings and options for all the onboard devices like the audio, LAN, USB 3.0, SATA ports, etc.

The Boot sub-menu is essentially where storage device priority can be set, boot drives are selected, the full screen logo can be enabled or disabled, and ton of other boot settings that can help with the installation or troubleshooting of various OS installations can be modified. The Security sub-menu is where you can set the administrator and individual user passwords, as well as enable or disable chassis intrusion feature. There is also a Save & Exit option but that seems redundant since you can just hit the F10 key instead.

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The OC menu is where most enthusiast will spend their time. Simply put, these pages easily make up for the quirky UI. The list of features and settings for those options is insanely long and we doubt many will find a feature missing. The amount of detail here is nothing short of impressive.

As its name suggests, the Advanced DRAM Configuration section is where you will find all the memory-related settings. Within this section you can select and change all the memory settings, and each memory channel has its own area, from which you can alter the primary and secondary timings. It has just about every memory modifier that an enthusiast or overclocker would need to fine-tune their modules.

Each of the main subsections defaults to a closed list making scrolling to the proper subgroup faster for experienced users, but more time consuming for novices - as they will have to manually enlarge each sub-section before being able to see the options. As we said this is a BIOS meant for enthusiasts and the learning curve can be very, very steep.

The CPU Specifications sub-section is where you can find all of the extensions that the processor you have installed supports, while the Memory-Z lists most of the important memory timings for each module you have installed.

 

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UEFI Explored pt.2

UEFI Explored pt.2

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The M-Flash section is the built-in utility that greatly simplifies the BIOS updating process. Here, the BIOS can be updated from a ROM file located on your hard drive(s) or USB flash drive(s). It is quick, painless, and it takes the worry out of BIOS flashing.

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The OC Profile feature gives users the option to save and switch between BIOS profiles, for example an everyday profile and a benchmarking profile. Not only is this infinitely quicker than manually inserting every setting, but the profiles can be saved and shared among other X370 XPower Gaming Titanium owners.

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The Hardware Monitor section is dedicated to the monitoring of the various voltages, temperatures, and fan speeds. This whole section is quite comprehensive, it has all the essential temperature and voltage readouts that you would expect. It also has improved fan control functionality thanks to real-time fan speed graphs with four manually adjustable RPM points. For those that prefer a more hands-off approach, there is also a Smart Fan Mode that can intelligently managed fan speeds based on CPU and/or system temperatures.

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One of the unique aspects of MSI's BIOS is the Board Explorer feature, which is an interactive map of the motherboard and what is attached to it. By clicking on any of the highlighted areas you can easily pull up detailed information about what fan headers, USB ports, and SATA ports are in use. It's actually a pretty neat feature.

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By pressing the F1 key or by clicking on the little heart icon in the top right corner you are brought to the new and somewhat hidden Favorites section. This basically allows you to have all your most useful or most used settings in one place, so you no longer have to search through the whole bios to find what you need time and time again.

 

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Included Software

Included Software

Command Center​

The most important utility in MSI's software suite is the Command Center. Although MSI still has a few standalone apps for different functions, the CC can be used for a wide ranging number of tasks. This system management utility is the hub from which you can monitor system clock speeds, voltages, temperatures, and fan rotation but more importantly it allows users to do both automatic and manual overclocking from within Windows.

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The Command Center initially opens to the CPU tab, where you can see the current CPU multiplier(s) and the BCLK frequency.You can manually change the multiplier for any one or all of the cores, as well as increase or decrease both the base clock and CPU core voltage on-the-fly. You can also adjust the fan speeds of both the CPU and PUMP/FAN1 headers, either manually or by using the Fan tune option.

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The DRAM tab allows you to change the memory frequency, as well as alter the DRAM voltage (for each channel). Assuming you have an APU installed, the IGP tab allows you to control the clock multiplier and voltage of the GPU that is integrated into the processor.

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The Game Boost tab is where you will find the automatic overclocking feature, though we prefer using the one-click button in the BIOS. As you will see in our Overclocking Results section, thought it is very easy to use it isn't quite as versatile or aggressive as some other manufacturers implementations.

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At the bottom this utility is a static strip with the buttons Advanced, Settings, and Information. Each of those three options reveals - in the form of icons - a handful of additional sub-menus and/or features.

For the Advanced option, the voltage button pop-ups a windows with eight fully adjustable system voltages. The fan button reveals where you can adjust all the system fans, and only the system fans, since the CPU fan control is part of the CPU section of the Command Center app. Clicking the DRAM button will reveal a few dozen memory timings settings, which is pretty sweet. The Sensor button opens up a large real-time onboard temperature sensor control window, which has temperature readouts and fan speeds.

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The Settings section is where you can record system voltages, fan speeds, and system temperatures. You can also establish high or low voltage, fan speed, and system temperature warnings. The Mobile Control panel is where you setup remote access to overclocking and monitoring functions, as well configure your mobile device as a remote for your system's media playback.

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The Information section is just some fundamental information about the specifications of the motherboard, the processor, and the system memory. There is also a Hardware Monitor that allows you to monitor system voltages, fan speeds, and temperatures.

 

[SKYMTL]

Included Software pt.2

Included Software pt.2

Gaming App​

While the Command Center is clearly the primary utility in MSI's rich software suite, the standalone Gaming App is also incredibly useful, especially since it is the only means of controlling the onboard RGB LED lighting. As a result, we are glad to see that it has received a sizeable update for this generation.

When you first enter the app, you are presented with three system performance profiles. While you would expect the OC Mode to enable the Game Boost preset that is found in the UEFI, it didn't actually do anything for us, same with the Gaming Mode. The Silent Mode restored the clock frequencies to their default values and also allowed the system to downclock when idling. If you are using an MSI graphics card, the OC Mode and Gaming Mode should automatically provide some form of GPU overclock.

The other four small icons open up Gaming Hotkey, Mouse Master, and VR. The four greyed out icon obviously has something to do with headsets, but it is not a clickable option, even in MSI's documentation. Gaming Hotkey is user-friendly feature that allows for the easy programming of macro keys, assigning of function keys, or creation of shortcuts for everything from launching any of any application with a single press to multimedia playback control. Mouse Master is a mouse macro utility, allowing users to assigns actions to different keys, as well as adjusting DPI on-the-fly at the touch of a hotkey. The VR feature effectively just enables and closes unnecessary applications in order to ensure the best possible VR experience.

The three icons at the top of the Gaming App are far more interesting than the three/four at the bottom. The first one is - as its name suggests - related to the onboard LEDs. This LED section is the only feature that gives users control over the Mystic Light RGB LED lighting, since there is no such option in the UEFI.

The RGB LEDs that are integrated into the four main lightning areas, as well as the RGB light strip header, can be adjusted to any one of 16.8 million colours and customized with your choice of cool lighting effects, such as breathing, flashing, double flashing, marquee, meteor, stack, rainbow, lightning, and random. They can also dance to your music, but not to the actual beat, instead you need to select the type of music you are playing (pop, rap, jazz, play, movie). The rudimentary MB Function LEDs - of which there are five - only have four of these effects and don't respond to music. We wish that this software - or perhaps the whole Mystic Light implementation - was a little more 'intelligent', with actual music beat detection and other real-time effects like reacting to CPU temperature, etc.

Since every lighting area is independently controlled, when you make changes you must click apply to save before moving on to the next area, which is a little annoying. We wish there was a way to control all the lighting areas with one click. Currently, the only such option is a button in the top-right corner that only allows for enabling or disabling all the LEDs.

The Chart icon is for the OSD. This on-screen display feature provides a real-time in-game overlay of potential information like CPU usage, CPU frequency, CPU temperature, CPU voltage, how many system memory is being used, and of course what the frame rate is.

The little eye icon opens up the Eye Rest feature, which has four modes that adjust the screen contrast to the optimal level for the given situation. The Eye Rest mode reduces your displays blue light output, which is the type of light that fatigues your eyes the most. The Gaming Mode bumps up the contrast and makes colours pop a little more. The Movie mode dynamically tweaks the gamma and contrast levels. The Customize mode gives you full control over brightness, contrast, gamma, and level...which as far as we can tell is just a less dramatic brightness correction.

Live Update 6

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The Live Update 6 utility is where you can automatically or manually update all the included motherboard-specific software, the drivers, and also download and flash the latest BIOS. You can also install or uninstall any of the software suites from this app as well.

X-Boost

The X-Boost utility offers a number of system modes designed to increase the performance of specific tasks. It is a little esoteric, since we have no idea what they could be doing to improve "Graphics Performance" or "Audio". Primarily though, this app is really marketed as a way boosting USB performance. In this respect it does work since it makes transfer rates slightly less erratic, but we suspect that is because there is a bit of caching going on somewhere.

Gaming LAN Manager

The Gaming LAN Manager is a utility designed to help reduce latency courtesy of the often-used cFosSpeed traffic-shapping technology. This utility provides users with a lot of control and monitoring capabilities over every application that is accessing the network. It displays CPU usage, ICMP and UDP average ping, and the network utilization of every system process and program. This tool also allows you give priority to certain applications, and throttle or block others to free network resources for other applications. It is your one-stop tool for monitoring and controlling all network traffic.

MSI CPU-Z

This motherboard ships with a special edition of CPU-Z especially created to match the aesthetics of MSI Gaming motherboards. It is kept as up-to-date as the regular version, and is available at the same place: CPUID.com

RAMDisk

The X370 XPower Gaming Titanium comes with the familiar RAMDisk utility. For those not familiar with what a RAMDisk is, it basically acts as a virtual drive that is much faster than even the fastest high-end solid state drive. The reason for this is that it makes use of unused system memory (ie: RAM), and turns a chunk of it into an OS-level storage partition (with its own drive letter) that can be used to accelerate the performance and response times of installed or cached applications.

Nahimic 2

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Much like the Creative Sound Blaster Cinema suite that ships with certain motherboards, the Nahimic 2 application takes a capable onboard audio solution and noticeably improves it. With this program you can enhance the surround soundstage to make it easier to pinpoint enemy player locations in online games, optimize the output for clearer audio for music, improve your microphone's abilities to yell orders to your team mate, record XSplit Gamecaster sessions to improve the sound before you upload to your audience, or even just balance all audio at the same level so when switching between applications you don’t deafen yourself. Much like Sound Blaster Cinema add-on which ships with certain motherboards, the Nahimic Audio Enhancer application takes an already good onboard audio solution and noticeably improves it. With this program you can enhanced enhance the surround soundstage to make it easier to pinpoint enemy player locations in online games, optimize the output for clearer audio for music, improve your microphone's abilities to yell orders to your team mate, record XSplit Gamecaster sessions to improve the sound before you upload to your audience, or even just balance all audio at the same level so when switching between applications you don’t deafen yourself.


While we have represented you with that pieces of software that are the most interesting to us, there are bunch of other utilities that we didn't have time to touch on, such as Fast Boost which enables/disables the UEFI's fast boot mode, or Smart Tool which creates a bootable USB for Windows 7 installation, or Dragon Eye that can overlay Twitch or YouTube videos on top of your active gaming session, or Mobile Control which is essentially a smartphone version of the Command Center application. There is also a free 1 year premium license for XSplit Gamecaster V2, which is a utility that allows record, stream and share your gaming session.

 

[SKYMTL]

Test Setups & Methodology

Test Setups & Methodology

For this review, we are going to be testing the performance of the MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium four configurations: default settings @ DDR4-2133, default settings @ DDR4-3200, automatic overclocking settings, and manual overclock settings. The components and software are the same across all five configurations, and aside from manually selecting the frequencies, timings, and voltages in the manual overclock configuration, every option in the BIOS was at its default setting.

AMD Ryzen AM4 Test Setup​

For all of the benchmarks, appropriate lengths are taken to ensure an equal comparison through methodical setup, installation, and testing. The following outlines our testing methodology:

A) Windows is installed using a full format.

B) Chipset drivers and accessory hardware drivers (audio, network, GPU) are installed.

C) To ensure consistent results, a few tweaks are applied to Windows 10 Pro and the NVIDIA control panel:

• UAC – Disabled
• Indexing – Disabled
• Superfetch – Disabled
• System Protection/Restore – Disabled
• Problem & Error Reporting – Disabled
• Remote Desktop/Assistance - Disabled
• Windows Security Center Alerts – Disabled
• Windows Defender – Disabled
• Screensaver – Disabled
• Power Plan – High Performance
• V-Sync – Off

D) All available Windows updates are then installed.

E) All programs are installed and then updated, followed by a defragment.

F) Benchmarks are each run three to ten times, and unless otherwise stated the results are then averaged.


Here is a full list of the applications that we utilized in our benchmarking suite:

• 3DMark Vantage Professional Edition v1.1.3
• 3DMark11 Professional Edition v1.0.132.0
• 3DMark 2013 Professional Edition v2.3.3693
• AIDA64 Engineer Edition v5.90.4242 Beta
• Cinebench R15 64-bit
• FAHBench 1.2.0
• Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward Benchmark
• Grand Theft Auto V
• HEVC Decode Benchmark (Cobra) v1.61
• LuxMark v3.1
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
• PCMark 8 v2.7.613
• SuperPi Mod v1.9 WP
• Valve Particle Simulation Benchmark v1.0.0.0
• WinRAR x64 5.50
• wPRIME version v2.10
• X3: Terran Conflict Demo v1.0

That is about all you need to know methodology wise, so let's get to the good stuff!