Overall and Final Verdict

So as you may have figured out, the move to X470 isn’t a big one from X370, if you are running an AM4 board there isn’t any reason to upgrade. But if you are just now deciding to build a new PC and want to go with the new Ryzen CPUs X470 isn’t a bad way to go. Everyone has revised boards available. In this case, when compared to the X370 Gaming M7 ACK the X470 Gaming M7 AC dropped the lighting on the bottom half of the board but kept all of the other features. What that means is you end up with a clean looking layout with a color-neutral them that lets you add your own flair via lighting or with your case itself. This shouldn’t sound too crazy as this is how things have been moving, but MSI offers a lot of crazy options like camo themes, all white or all silver, lots of black and red, and even carbon fiber looking boards. While I like some of those options, especially the white and silver ones, I’m happy that the M7 AC keeps it simple and lets you set the tone. They do that with a whole bunch of lighting headers, so you can run normal RGB, addressable, or even link right in your Corsair products and control them with your Mystic software.

The other thing that stood out with the M7 was just how many USB headers are on the board as well. With most motherboards, if you have a new 3.1 gen 2 header you only get a single gen 1. But MSI packed on two 3.1 gen 1’s a 3.1 gen2, and two old school 2.0’s for those internal devices like lighting controllers and AIO’s that now need them. So you should be good on USB ports.

As for issues, my only real issue in testing was the double click bug that I’ve been experiencing on MSI boards in the BIOS. It is limited to just that though so most people won’t notice it. I also don’t know how much of a fan of the large U shaped cooler used to cool both M.2’s and the chipset. Tying those together in general worries me a little as heat is the main thing that kills NAND so if you have hot cool cycles from the chipset when not using your SSD are you lowing its life. But mostly just because every time I see the cooler I want to play horseshoes with them.

Overall though the MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC is a good board, you get lots of connection options, built-in wireless, and it looks good (mostly). This isn’t a cheap board, in fact at least right now this is MSI’s most expensive X470 option at $259.99. The price seems to of gone up slightly compared to the X370 variation that was originally $239. You do now get an Intel wireless NIC and I prefer that, a lot more RGB connection options, and higher overclocked memory support. Overall this isn’t a bad board though being a higher end X470 board it doesn’t really feel like a high-end board but I can’t put my finger on it. But if you want RGB headers and USB header options I doubt you are going to find any other X470 boards that compare with the MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC so it really depends on what you need.

fv5recommended

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Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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