BIOS

So as always, one of the big areas that can make or break a motherboard for me is in its software implementation. In the past that used to just be what you installed in windows because everyone had the same basic BIOS. But with UEFI’s most companies have gone out on their own with their own navigation setups, features, and tools. Rather than post up 100 pictures, I did a slow basic walkthrough video of the UEFI on the MSI B360 Gaming Plus. This way I show every single option and page and if you need to you can pause to make sure you have everything you need.

So like a lot of boards, the B360 comes with an EZ Mode UEFI and MSI did a great job by making sure I landed there first. I hate when you start in the advanced mode because inexperienced uses would have to find the EZ mode and are more likely to change things that shouldn’t be changed. So the easy mode has the CPU and motherboard temps up in the corner along with basic information and clock speeds. You can one touch turn on XMP memory speeds and drag and drop boot devices. You can also flip through pages over on the left to see but not be able to change different settings.

Once you switch to the advanced mode (up top if you didn’t see it) you get the traditional layout that MSI has been using for a while now. This has OC profiles over on the right along with the hardware monitor and a board explorer. The board explorer lets you see a photo of your board and mouse over to see where each thing is plugged in at. Up to we have the same one-click XMP, clock speeds, temps, and drag and drop boot options so that is nice. The hardware monitor page on the right opens up to show you all of the RPM readouts and temps. It also lets you change the fan profiles, change the fans between PWM and DC, and set if you want that fan to go off of CPU or system temps.  

When you get into the two main option pages over on the left, the settings page and the OC page MSI has basically split all motherboard options into anything overclocking related and everything else is in the settings menu. Each of these menus looks and feels a lot more like old BIOS navigation. You can still use your mouse but you can also use a keyboard if you want and in some cases, a keyboard to type in clocks or voltages would be quicker than one click at a time.

The settings menu has all of the peripheral and chipset features in it as well as your full system status. If you watch me click through it starting at about 1:20 you will also notice that from time to time when I click the back button it takes me back multiple pages to the main menu and I have to start over. I thought it was a double click issue with my mouse at first but this happened with another mouse as well. I’ve never had the issue before but it seems there is a bug with it. As for the overclocking options, there are a surprising amount of options for this not being a Z series board. In the end, really you are limited by the memory speed cap on B360 but if you want you could overclock the CPU halfway decently.