Software

While the hardware you get is the most important part of a motherboard purchase, the other half is going to be your overall experience. Part of that is the performance, something I will talk about later but a good portion of your experience relies on the software your motherboard comes with. This covers anything you install with it as well as the UEFI as well. The reason this is important is because if you get an amazing board and the software is crap you can’t really take advantage of all of the fancy features. Software development takes a lot of time and a lot of people but the biggest motherboard manufactures have really stepped up their game over the past few years. MSI like a lot of the manufactures has combined a lot of their programs to cut down on what it takes to get everything installed but there were still three programs that I wanted to cover.

The main program that MSI uses is their MSI Command Center. This is where you can dig in and find out how things are performing with access to all of the boards temperature and voltage sensors. In addition to that you have the ability to tweak your CPU, ram, and integrated GPU. You aren’t limited to just clock speeds you can also get into voltage adjustments. In fact, the only things you can’t control from the Command Center that you can from the BIOS are things like your boot order and turn on and off chipset and CPU features. For people who want to keep things simple the software has a tab called Game Boost that is basically the old OC Genie, it overclocks everything for you. Also in the Command Center is the option to be able to turn on USB 3.1 Speed Up, a feature that streamlines USB 3.1 performance. I test it in the USB section later on!

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Another key program is MSIs Live Update. Basically this program scans MSIs database and figures out if you are missing drivers or if your drivers are out of date. In addition to that it also helps you download and update the boards BIOS. There isn’t too much to the software but it does get the job done. If I had my way it would be built into the Command Center though.

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The last program I wanted to touch on is the Gaming App. Basically this is a small program that runs in your taskbar. When you open it up you can one click change your overclock from an OC Mode, Gaming Mode, and a Silent mode depending on how you are using your PC at the time. It also integrates on screen displays for your games if you want to see temperatures, clock speeds, and voltages while gaming.

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MSI’s UEFI is a lot like their software with the black and red theme that matches the board and of course mouse functionality. Navigating feels a LOT smoother than my experiences with MSI UEFIs in the past, I used to have weird issues with the mouse implementation in areas that would normally me navigated by a keyboard but those seem to be worked out. The home screen you start on is the advanced page and you actually have to look up top to flip to the simple page. I really feel like it should drop you into the Easy Mode first and let more advanced users navigate out to help prevent people who don’t know what they are doing from doing damage. If not what’s the point of the Easy Mode. The UEI has all of the normal Chipset and CPU options in the settings menu. They have split off anything clock speed, voltage, or ram related into the OC menu for easier overclocking as well. Up on the top is the quick Game Boost mode as well as a button to turn on XMP mode. You also have a line with all of the potential boot devices that you can drag and drop. Above that are a few main PC details and a current DDR and CPU clock speed and temps. They try to keep every option simple with an explanation of each on the right if you click it. All in all the UEFI is easy to navigate, has all f the features you might need, and themed to match the Gaming Series board.

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #37566 16 Jan 2016 02:20
Today I check out the Z170I Gaming Pro AC from MSI, their gaming focused Mini-ITX board
VaporX's Avatar
VaporX replied the topic: #37567 16 Jan 2016 02:38
I have reached the point I do not like the "gaming" motherboards. You can often get the same performance, minus a little overclocking potential for as much as 30% less, especially in ITX format.

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