Overall and Final Verdict
So it’s 2016, Mini ITX boards have become mainstream and every manufacture makes them. That said it still sometimes feels like only a few manufactures really get the whole LANrig idea. A lot of manufactures only make basic Min-ITX boards. Part of this is because frankly, it’s actually a lot of work to try to pack all of the features that gamers and enthusiasts are looking for. MSI gets it though and they have for a long time now, hell for the last few years they have even been selling barebones LAN rigs with the Nightblade series. The Z170I Gaming Pro AC fits right in. Sure the name is unnecessarily long, I would prefer it be something like Z170 Gaming ITX, the pro just doesn’t do anything and we know it has AC.
As far as features go the Z170I hits the nail on the head. MSI of course packs in Wireless AC and bluetooth, two features that come in handy with small form factor builds. But it was the attention to detail like with the hidden M.2 drive slot on the back of the PCB. They get that we want the fastest without compromise and you can’t do that by skipping an M.2 drive or making to sit vertical in a tiny build. I was also really digging that most of the connections ended up in the top right corner of the board, so wiring should be cleaner. The exception to that of course is the onboard audio port that is tucked on the left side of the board just above the GPU. I also dig the red and black theme and the boards mostly clean styling.
The Z170I performed well in most of my testing, keeping up and even surpassing the full ATX boards in nearly every test proving that size doesn’t matter when it comes to motherboards. Packing in a 6700K and paring it with a GTX 980 proved to be a bit of a monster actually. Swapping to a more size appropriate Fury Nano would allow for impressive performance numbers in a form factor smaller than the lunchboxes I used to take to school when I was young. I did run into one performance issue with the Z170I, specifically with the Intel NIC that MSI went with. I saw slower transfer speeds with it when testing on our Trendnet Switch. This was limited to just some switches and frankly while slow in comparison to other NICs I doubt you would ever notice a difference in realworld testing, it is still faster than you will see on wireless in most cases.
So how does the Z170I compare to the competition? Well it stacks up very well when comparing features to everything except the Asus Impact. Add to that good software and what I think is an improving reputation I think it is a great board to consider. Its price is up a little higher than some of the boards but still well below the Impact and the Stinger from EVGA as well. I wouldn’t consider it to be an amazing value, but it is priced well for the features you get.
Live pricing: HERE