MSI Z270 XPower Gaming Titanium Motherboard Review

Our next Z270-based board we will review is from MSI and is their current flagship board: the MSI Z270 XPower Gaming Titanium. If you remember our review of the Z170 version from way back in 2015, they managed to merge both a quality gaming motherboard and a very solid overclocking motherboard into one pretty cool Titanium-themed motherboard. While not much has changed going from Z170 to Z270, we’ll look at some of the features on the board and make sure it still performs with the rest of them. Grab a soda, sit back, and enjoy!

Specifications

Below is our gratuitous list of specifications from the MSI website for the Z270 XPower Gaming Titanium. This board, as well as Z170 boards (make sure to update your BIOS for Kaby Lake before upgrading on Z170 friends!!) supports both 6th and 7th gen (Skylake and Kaby Lake) processors. The board has four DIMM slots in dual channel supporting up to 64GB DDR4 at speeds up to 4000 MHz.

The onboard graphics supports the new Iris Plus 630, the board has one HDMI, and one Displayport able to output up to true 4K resolutions. If we talk about discrete cards, which most people will use with a board like this, you are looking at 2-Way SLI support for NVIDIA cards, and 4-Way CrossfireX for AMD based GPUs. The four PCIe lanes break down to x16/x0/x0/x4, x8/x0/x8/x4, or x8/x4/x4/x4 modes.

Storage handled by the chipset equates to six SATA 6Gb/s ports, three M.2 slots (key M), as well as a U.2 port. You are able to RAID the SATA ports (RAID o, 1, 5, 10), as well as the M.2 ports (RAID 0 and 1). The ASMedia ASM 1061 chipset controls two additional SATA 6 GB/s ports bringing your total to eight.

The LAN is controlled by dual Intel Gigabit LAN controllers, an I219-V and an I211AT. They support Intel LAN teaming as well.

Audio is processed by the new Realtek ALC1220 CODEC, MSI’s implementation is called Audio Boost 4, which, on paper, is a superior successor to the ALC1150 we saw on Z170 boards. The Z270 XPower Gaming separates the audio from the rest of the board, uses EMI shielding on the IC, as well as higher end capi-con caps. Nahimic 2, their software to adjust the sound, also makes an appearance on some Z270 boards including the Z270 XPower Gaming Titanium.

Please refer to the table below, and at MSI’s website for more specifications and details!

Features

MSI has a very long list of features, all of which you can see at the Z270 XPower Gaming Titanium product page. Below we did our usual and picked out a few to mention here.

It seems like RGB LEDs are what all the people want in their systems these days and motherboard manufacturers have been quick to respond and bring them to market at a dizzying pace. MSI certainly did not disappoint and brought us Mystic Light. This software has been expanded in Mystic Light Sync to control the RBG LED’s on your board or other compatible devices, even from other brands. This would include CPU Coolers, keyboards, mice, and RGB fans. The XPower Titanium here has RGB headers to connect RGB strips which are also controlled by the Mystic Light Sync software.

MSI has brought the user more control over their system cooling by letting you manage temperatures and speeds of the system/CPU fans. These headers use an autodetect function to see if the fan on the other end is DC or PWM controlled. They also use Hysteresis to minimize quick jumps in fan speed and noise. MSI has added a pretty nifty visual feature here with an LED indicator which shows if you have control over various fans in your system. Red is control, while green is not. Seems a bit backwards to me, but, it is what it is! Last but certainly not least, there is a high amp (2A) fan header giving you control over pump speed.

The Z270 XPower Gaming Titanium is Intel Optane ready, so when we see those M.2 parts or DIMMS come out you can drop them right in. Another welcome addition found on this motherboard is the use of an M.2 shield. This shield is a thin piece of aluminum with a thermal pad running its full 80mm length to help keep these hot running devices cool and prevent throttling. Versus not using the M.2 shield, it helped lower temperatures by a few °C. This feature is only found one of the 3x Turbo M.2 slots.

The Z270 chipset brought with it an update from Realtek on the audio side of things, moving from their ALC1150 to ALC1220. MSI calls this their Audio Boost 4. The new CODEC sports a 120db SNR which is a few db better than the outgoing CODEC. MSI has isolated the audio from the rest of the board along with using separate layers of the PCB for left and right channels. They use a dedicated headphone amplifier which auto detects impedance as well. Let’s not forget about the chemi-con audio caps which are said to produce a warmer sound. Not to be mixed up with the Nichicon we have seen on previous boards.

MSI has really worked at optimizing DDR4 memory with the DDR4 Boost on the past couple of generations. This includes all DigitALL power design for better efficiency, thorough memory testing with the most popular brands under “extreme” conditions, which culminates with the Easy XMP button. This button is used to to quickly set the XMP profile quickly from your BIOS. From those that know memory the best (read: not I!) it is said MSI boards are some of the best when it comes to overclocking memory.

The XPower origins really came from the heart of an overclocking board, but has since transformed into a combination that’s for gamers that want to overclock the heck out of anything they put in it. An enviable trait no doubt. MSI has used Premium power phases, their DigitALL power design, have voltage checkpoints on the board in their V-Check Points 2, Slow mode, BIOS Flashback+, OC Engine 2 for BCLK adjustments, and of course their OC Dashboard. Plenty of toys here for the beginning overclocker, all the way up to the LN2 guys.

What good are some of these features if the board can’t take it? MSI stamps the Z270 XPower Gaming Titanium with its Military Class V stamp, which is just an umbrella name for many of its features, including the use of those premium power bit parts like the Titanium chokes, Dark Cap, and Dark Chokes. Wrap all this up and you have a stable gaming and overclocking platform.

	PERSONALIZE YOUR GAMING RIG Customize and set up your own color scheme with RGB Mystic Light Sync. Select any of the colors from the palette using your smartphone or the MSI Gaming App to match your system style. Bored of the same colors? Simply change the complete look of your system in 1 second! EXTEND YOUR RGB EXPERIENCE WITH EASE MSI’s Mystic Light Extension pinheader provides an intuitive way to control additional RGB strips and other RGB peripherals added to a system, without needing a separate RGB controller. By simply connecting any 12V RGB LED strip to the 4-pin Mystic Light Extension RGB-strip header gamers can sync colors to any style they choose. MYSTIC LIGHT SYNC: SYNCHRONIZE YOUR LED EXPERIENCE With the convenience of Mystic Light Sync, you can control RGB LED solutions from other brands, such as CPU coolers, keyboards and mice or RGB system fans.
	LOOKING COOL WHILE KEEPING COOL High quality materials and smart fan optimizations contribute to cooling all essential components, which is key to making sure your system runs stable at the best performance during long gaming sessions. FULLY CONTROLLABLE FAN HEADERS MSI motherboards let you manage speeds and temperatures for all your system and CPU fans, giving you full control to set up a cool & silent system. The fan headers are conveniently placed with the most popular CPU coolers in mind. AUTODETECT DC OR PWM MODE WITH HYSTERESIS MSI fan headers automatically detect fans running in DC or PWM mode for optimal tuning of fan speeds and silence. Hysteresis also makes your fans spin up fluently to make sure your system stays silent, no matter what. FAN MODE LED INDICATORS Onboard LED indicators show if your fans are running in a mode that’s controllable or not. When the LED indicator is red, you have full control of your fan. If the LED indicator is green, it means your fan is running in a mode you cannot control. OPTIMIZED FOR WATER COOLING Designed to support the most popular All-In-One & custom water cooling solutions on the market. A dedicated water pump PIN header supports up to 2 amp, giving you full control of the water pump speed. A clearly marked ‘keep-out-zone’ allows for easy and safe installation and a perfect fit.
	INTEL® OPTANE™ READY This new technological marvel brings game-changing performance to memory and storage devices. Allow Optane™ caching to boost your storage devices for an even faster system! PROTECT & COOL YOUR M.2 DEVICE WITH M.2 SHIELD Connect your M.2 device safer & easier while keeping it cooler for the best performance using the unique M.2 Shield. MSI M.2 Shield features cooling pads to lower the temperature of your M.2 device and avoid any possible throttling, causing it to slow down. Be sure your system stays blazing fast with M.2 Shield! 3X TURBO M.2 Enjoy a blazing fast system boot up and insanely quick loading of applications and games with MSI motherboards. Delivering speeds up to 32Gb/s per device using Gen3 x4, Turbo M.2 is over 5 times faster than a regular SATA III connection!
	NEXT-GEN HIGH DEFINITION AUDIO PROCESSOR Audio Boost 4 is powered by an EMI-shielded High Definition audio processor with built-in DAC, making sure you enjoy the purest sound quality in both stereo and surround sound. 120dB SNR / 32-bit Supports DSD Super Audio CD playback & recording (64x better than regular CD quality) AMPLIFY YOUR GAME WITH AUDIO BOOST 4 Built on years of experience in building motherboards dedicated to giving gamers true Hi-Fi sound. Audio Boost has developed into a high quality audio unit, offering a clear advantage over your opponents when gaming. Locate your enemies with your eyes closed using Audio Boost 4. ISOLATED AUDIO DESIGN WITH LED BORDER SEPARATED AUDIO LAYERS FOR CLEAN LEFT & RIGHT CHANNELS DE-POP PROTECTION DEDICATED HEADPHONE AMPLIFIER THAT AUTO-DETECTS IMPEDANCE CHEMI-CON AUDIO CAPACITORS FOR A WARMER SOUND
	ENHANCED STABILITY WITH OPTIMIZED MEMORY LAYOUT Optimized traces and a fully isolated memory circuitry ensures perfect stability and performance, so you never have to worry about your system crashing during games. DIGITALL MEMORY POWER DESIGN An all-digital power design offers lower power consumption and precise voltage delivery for enhanced efficiency for a non-stop gaming experience. EXTREME STABILITY & COMPATIBILITY TESTING MSI conducts thorough memory testing with the most popular memory brands under extreme conditions to ensure your system runs stable no matter what. Our memory partners include brands like Corsair, Crucial, Kingston, G.Skill and many more to optimize memory modules, configurations and even improve overclocking. EASY XMP Enable Intel® Extreme Memory Profile with ease using a single option in the BIOS to gain performance and create a perfectly stable system.
	DESIGNED FOR LIMITLESS TUNING Founded on experience and with a long history of creating the best performing motherboards packed with smart features, you can count on this motherboard to deliver the best performance under the most extreme conditions. Countless system tuning and troubleshooting tools are at your disposal to push your system to new heights and satisfy even the most demanding tweaker. OC ENGINE 2 / BIOS FLASHBACK+ OC PCB / SLOW MODE / DIRECT OC V-CHECK POINTS 2 / GO2BIOS PREMIUM POWER PHASES DIGITALL POWER DESIGN
	BUILT ON EVERLASTING QUALITY Using only the finest quality components and integrating the latest technological innovations delivers the best possible gaming and professional experience. Rigorous quality testing under the most extreme conditions ensures a super reliable, high performance motherboard. M.2 SHIELD / PCI-E STEEL ARMOR STEEL ARMOR / ULTIMATE MOTHERBOARD PROTECTION SUPER STABLE GAMING WITH THE HIGHEST QUALITY COMPONENTS MSI uses Military Class 5 components, which is the latest evolution of the industries’ highest quality standard. These high quality components are shielded by the best protection to make sure your system runs smoothly under the most extreme gaming conditions. TITANIUM CHOKE / DARK CAP DARK CHOKE

Retail Packaging and Accessories

Our first set of pictures/slideshow shows us what the retail packaging looks like. As one may have guessed, MSI sticks with the Titanium theme on the packaging as well. On the front is a picture of the board itself, along with the name and high-level features. The back continues to display specifications and features as well as the flip open front panel. The board sits on top protected by a plastic cover. You can see the board through the MSI Gaming Dragon Shield gracing the other side of the flip open box. The last picture shows the included accessories.

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Meet the Z270 XPower Gaming Titanium

Looking at the overall design, there isn’t too much that is different compared to the Z170 board. The PCH heatsink has a slightly different look to it, there is an additional shroud covering the rear I/O down to the audio section which is new as well. Outside of that, we see the their Steel Armor has made it to all full length PCIe slots. But overall its still the same unique, Titanium colored board with some new features under the hood. The back of the board shows the the electrical breakdown of the PCIe slots, otherwise, there isn’t much interesting there.

A Closer Look

While exploring the bottom half of the board, we see covered on the left side is where all the audio goodies we talked about earlier reside. To the right of it are the four 16x PCIe slots protected with Steel Armor, as well as the three total Turbo M.2 slots. To the right of that is the PCH heatsink and SATA/U.2 ports, while on the bottom you see the power/reset buttons and the infamous Game Boost knob (goes to 11!).

Sliding around to the DIMM area, it’s pretty busy up there with a couple more SATA ports, the 24-Pin ATX connector, the OC Dashboard and its resting place, the V-Check Point 2 voltage read points, and of course the four DIMM slots. The OC Dashboard needs to be removed from the board header and plugged in with the included cord for it to work properly (why?!). Also around that area are some the CPU, AIO/Pump (high amperage), and System fan headers.

Below shows a picture of the rear I/O. Details of which are found above. But it has all the usual suspects from USB slots, 2.0 to 3.0 G2 Type C, video outputs for onboard iGPU use, dual NICs, and audio. The storage portion of the board in the second picture shows the eight total SATA ports, a front USB port, as well as the U.2 port. Plenty of storage options here folks!

The next picture shows MSI’s OC Dashboard a bit closer. It has buttons to change the BCLK and CPU Multiplier, as well as your power/reset buttons and a complete discharge button. To make things easier getting into windows, there is a slow boot switch and a fastboot button to get you right to the BIOS on a reboot (whose function can be changed in the BIOS as well).

Last up we can see the board works with a total of 16 Phases, so it seems pretty well equipped to handle whatever you can throw at it and not skip a beat. When you are getting really serious about overclocking and venture into sub-ambient cooling, you are surely covered and should use the additional 4-Pin CPU power header. Under ambient clocking, you will be just fine with the typical 8-Pin.

UEFI BIOS and Monitoring/Overclocking Software

Next up is a screenshot of MSI’s Click BIOS 5 for the Z270 XPower Gaming Titanium. Since there are so many screens and so many options, I just skimmed across the major headings at the top, showing the EZ Mode first.

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Next up is a slideshow giving a much more deep dive into the OC section, where many here make their home in a BIOS. As always, there is plenty of functionality and options to mess with to keep the most hardcore enthusiast happy. Maneuvering around the BIOS with either the keyboard or mouse is smooth and everything seems to be in a logical, easy to find location. These features make the Click BIOS 5 one of my favorite UEFI’s.

Results/Motherboard Comparison

As we have seen with the ASUS ROG Maximus IX Formula, there are no significant performance differences between like systems and speeds. Most differences you see here are simply clockspeed/platform differences.

Same goes with our more heavy and productivity based benchmarks… not a big difference between the two at all.

As you guessed it… same with the memory. The MSI Z270 XPower Gaming Titanium falls right in with the other board we reviewed, if not a hair faster overall in AIDA64.

Raw Data:

Pushing the Limits

With the Engineering Sample 7700K CPU I have, this is just about as far as I can push it with being relatively stable. As time went on from the Kaby Lake review (which is what the screenshot is from), I found the ES I had was pretty below average when it came to overclocking hitting 5Ghz stable at 1.41V. Looks like I will have to buy a retail CPU if I want to bench on this thing and make it worth it! But either way, the board didn’t flinch. About the worst thing that happens is when using XMP, the board sets the System Agent and I/O voltage really high to 1.45 and 1.4V respectively.

Conclusion

MSI has taken what Intel has given them to work from and made another glorious iteration of their XPower Titanium line. From the beefed up 16-Phase power bits, to three M.2 slots – one with shielding to reduce the chance of thermal throttling, Intel Gaming LAN with Bandwidth management and LAN Protect (Static electricity), the XMP and Fan LEDs for quick system status, and even its ever spreading Steel Armor, makes for one heck of a board hardware-wise.

As far as negatives, can’t say I have many! That said, the M.2 shield is pretty flimsy on this board, in that the whole thing comes off very easily. You cannot swap slots with it as the other two are shielded, but, every time I took it off, it fell off (super easy to put it back on). The other item of note is the values the board sets for System Agent and I/O voltage when using XMP settings/profiles… 1.45 and 1.4V. That’s a lot, not harmful note, but typically isn’t needed. MSI does this to make sure more ram and IMC’s are compatible with these high speeds. Note: on my sample, it took 1.25/1.20V respectively to become stable at 3866 MHz on the ram. Just be sure to lower that voltage as/if needed. That’s about it. Otherwise, it was very solid for me throughout my use of it in the Kaby Lake review and this one.

Pricing on this board is $329.99 at newegg.com. This costs well below two other flagship motherboards: The ASUS Maximus IX Formula at $389, and the GIGABYTE Aorus Z270 Gaming 9 at $499, by $60 and $120 respectively. Really, the board has everything one would want and then some from its m.2 shield and three m.2 slots, RGB control, and great overclocking capabilities. I’d like to see it priced around $299 or less though. I’m sure after the inflation of the newest items wear off it will fall there. If you are in the market for a unique looking board that will do it all, you don’t really need to look any further. The MSI Z270 XPower Gaming Titanium has what you need.

– Joe Shields (Earthdog)