MSI 970 Gaming Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. Packaging and Bundle3. MSI 970 Gaming Motherboard4. BIOS Setup5. Software6. Performance and Overclocking7. Benchmarks8. Power Consumption9. Closing Thoughts10. View All Pages

The MSI 970 Gaming motherboard looks very smart in appearance with a colour scheme that is mainly black with a hint of red. This has a downside as the board is slightly more complicated to set up than we would like, thanks to the absence of colour coding or helpful printed legends next to the connectors. Provided you refer to the manual you are unlikely to run into any problems.

The only howler in terms of the design or layout is the eight-pin EPS connector which is awkward to unlatch. Ideally it would be rotated 180 degrees or, better yet, the PWM heatsink would be profiled to improve access.

The list of features supplied by the 970 + SB950 chipset is little more than basic and doesn't include PCI Express 3.0 or USB 3.0, however the performance of this board is perfectly acceptable with a grunty FX-8350 in the AM3+ socket.

MSI has sprinkled some goodies on the 970 chipset in the shape of the Killer NIC, VIA USB 3.0 controller, Sound Blaster Cinema 2 software and red connectors for gaming peripherals.

Balanced against that the MSI Control Centre and MSI Command Centre utilities are not especially useful. When you look at the I/O panel you'll find eight USB 2.0 ports and two USB 3.0 ports, which is pretty generous.

The biggest disappointment about the 970 Gaming is that the power hungry nature of FX-8350 has forced MSI to restrict OC Genie 4 to a tiny level of overclocking that is effectively useless.

Happily the Click BIOS is very good and makes it a simple matter to raise the speed of the CPU, provided you are willing to deal with the resulting power draw and unwelcome levels of heat. The only change that would markedly improve the Click BIOS would be a shift from relative settings such as +0.20V to absolute figures.

This is a decent piece of hardware that delivers solid performance at a low price and the fact it is built on three year old technology is completely out of MSI's hands.

You can pre-order from SCAN in the United Kingdom for £69.56 inc vat.

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Pros:

• Low price
• Backwards support for AM3 and AM3+ processors
• Killer Gigabit NIC
• Sound Blaster Cinema 2 software
• Gaming peripheral ports
• Support for dual graphics cards
• Smart styling
• Effective Click BIOS is easy to navigate using a mouse
• Solid performance

Cons:

• AMD 970 chipset does not support USB 3.0
• OC Genie 4 barely overclocks the FX-8350 CPU
• The passive coolers require a decent amount of air flow to avoid problems
• Poor positioning of the EPS power connector

KitGuru says: If you're in the market for a gaming PC built on AMD hardware, the MSI 970 Gaming offers you very good value for money.

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