MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC Review

Test Setup

MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC
Intel Core i7-8700X
Corsair ROG Dominator Platinum 3200 – Stock Tests
G.Skill Trident-Z 3600 – OC Tests
Corsair RM1000i
Corsair MP500 512GB
Corsair H110i GT
Windows 10

Overclocking

Our only negative point which kind of belongs here but also doesnt is the voltage that help support memory speeds. Both the VCCIO and the SA (system agent) auto voltages were in our opinion when trying to run even a simple 3200MHz XMP insane. We saw close to 1.4v on these, if you were to manually set them they go bright red and sing alarm bells at 1.2. This has been a consistent issue and oversight with MSI boards and is normally a setting most users overlook. We could get the board running happily at well below 1.2v and once we did we could actually get the 5GHZ overclock below stable, before that we couldnt!

So far a lot of the Z370 motherboards that we’ve tested managed to squeeze 5 GHz from our Intel Core i7-8700K and the MSI Carbon is no exception, rocking out with 3200 MHz DDR4 and a stable 5 GHz at 1.3v. The ease of modern overclocking almost makes the years we spent learning how to do it in the dark old days feel wasted. What once required a tome now can be covered in 4 or 5 bullet points.