MSI Z170(A) Krait - Questions for Owners

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scotthew

scotthew

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Dec 11, 2011
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I'm looking to get MSI's Z170 Krait (or Z170A) with a Skylake i7 and had a few questions.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130879
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130868

I've never used an M.2 slot before, but I'd like to put a Samsung 950 Pro SSD in this one, which I believe is m-key.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147466
Are they compatible? The board supports PCI Express 3.0 over this M.2, right? So I should see an improvement over using classical SSDs over SATA6?

I've seen very mixed reviews on the OC ability of this board. Some people say it doesn't OC well and if I plan on it, I should just get a different board. Other reviews have claimed stable, substantial overclocks. Has anyone ran this for some time with the i7-6700K OC'd?

Not being familiar with naming conventions, what's the general difference between the Z170 & Z170A?

Thanks for your help!

UPDATE: Forgot to ask: What RAID controller does this board use? Is it any good? The biggest disappointment with my current ASUS board is that the Marvell RAID controller the SATA6 ports use is so terrible that I get better speeds plugging into the SATA3 ports. D:
 
Solution
JackNaylorPE
I have had the opposite experience.... After 10 years of favoring Asus over all others, it's the Asus builds that have dominated our call backs by a large margin with Z77 and Z87 to the point where we stopped using them with early with Z97. Lackluster performance and newegg user reviews confirmed that this was a wise decision

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/msi_z97_gaming_6_review/10

The ranking is based on setting the board which recorded the highest combined fps in the gaming tests at 100% and ranking the others by fps as a % of the fastest one.

MoBo % of Leader

MSI Z97 Gaming 9 - 100.00%
MSI Z97 Gaming 5 - 99.86%
MSI Z97A Gaming 6 - 98.96%
Asus Z97 TUF Sabranco - 96.13%
Gigabyte Z97X Gaming 5...
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Good to know. I've had an ASUS board for the last 6 years, and it's been solid. I've had good MSI vid cards, but never a mobo. As silly as it sounds, I'm really hoping that the Krait is a decent board because of its color scheme. Don't see many black and white. So sick of red on everything. But if the board won't perform, then I might have to just have slightly less pretty build. D:

 
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the different between z170 and z170a from msi motherboard
is means supports usb 3.1 gen2 or not
z170a means yes,

and for many years, I use msi motherboard and dont event seend any qc issue or problem
and I will never say the motherboard is bad or something, because I believe there is no "perfect" motherboard brand in the world, you can also see other's come out with question and issue.

you may want to think about the budget and feature you may looking for. to pick the right motherboard with your needs.
 
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UPDATE: Forgot to ask: What RAID controller does this board use? Is it any good? The biggest disappointment with my current ASUS board is that the Marvell RAID controller the SATA6 ports use is so terrible that I get better speeds plugging into the SATA3 ports. D:
 
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I recently had a problem with the msi krait z170. Did a build with it for my buddy. It wouldn't hold his 6600k at 4.5ghz under load. It kept dropping back to stock clocks. Very poor vrm. We swapped it or for the Asus z170A. 0 issues. Overclocked like a champ to 4.5ghz with no problems.
 
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ASUS P6X58D Premium
The two SATA6 use some really crappy Marvell controller and the other SATA3 use Intel ICH10R iirc. The Marvell one was so bad that I got an additional 100-150 mbps putting my RAID0 on the SATA3 ports. I was rather upset after buying two nice SSDs expecting to get some crazy fast read times. This go around I think I'll try the M.2 slot as long as I can find out if this board is compatible with the typical SSDs. RAID0 might be a bit gimmicky for me to go through the hassle anyways, but I'd still like to know what controller this MSI board uses.
 
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Did MSI support have anything to say? Another reviewer OC'd a i5-6600K to an impressive 4.5GHz without issue.
http://www.pcgameware.co.uk/reviews/motherboards/msi-z170a-krait-gaming-motherboard-review/
Just curious if you think your experience was an anomaly or typical.
 
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Not sure. Just letting you know my personal experience with this board. Plus others have mentioned it doesn't OC well, plus poor QC. It's up to you but if you like it due to the looks, well so did my buddy but the z170a from Asus looks nice too. Your call though
 
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Cool, thank you! Wasn't sure how the key/notches thing worked.
 
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I have had the opposite experience.... After 10 years of favoring Asus over all others, it's the Asus builds that have dominated our call backs by a large margin with Z77 and Z87 to the point where we stopped using them with early with Z97. Lackluster performance and newegg user reviews confirmed that this was a wise decision

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/msi_z97_gaming_6_review/10

The ranking is based on setting the board which recorded the highest combined fps in the gaming tests at 100% and ranking the others by fps as a % of the fastest one.

MoBo % of Leader

MSI Z97 Gaming 9 - 100.00%
MSI Z97 Gaming 5 - 99.86%
MSI Z97A Gaming 6 - 98.96%
Asus Z97 TUF Sabranco - 96.13%
Gigabyte Z97X Gaming 5 - 95.00%
Gigabyte Z97X SOC Force - 94.95%
Asus Z97 Maximus VII Hero - 93.67%
Asus Z97 Maximus VII Formula - 93.58%
Asus Z97 Maximus VII Gene - 91.69%
Asus Z97-A - 89.57%
MSI Z97 Mpower MAX AC - 88.20%
MSI Z97S Krait SLI - 71.01%

But past performance may or may not be an indicator of current product offerings. With Z170 Asus seems to have returned to form with regard to performance as all MoBos from all vendors are within a very small range performance wise.

.... it is worth noting that Asus is now following MSI's lead in building their latest boards with MilSpec components.

Simply put, as damning as our personal experience might be, with under 100 builds a year, it can't be considered statistically relevant. You can find data on build quality that is statistically relevant and that you can actually verify via published reports. Once you get data samplings in the 100s on each board and well into the thousands for each board the potential error with respect to the overall population is nil. With a sample of 100, your margin of error is < 10%..... a sample size of 380 gives you 5% .... at 1070, your at 3%

1. If you look at large sample size warranty returns, you'll find no significant difference among major vendors. Failure rates over the last 4 six month study periods have ranged as follows:

All data from http://www.hardware.fr last 4 industry reports.

Asus 1.86 - 2.86% (Median 2.36%)
AsRock 2.09 - 2.99% (Median 2.54%)
Gigabyte 1.43 - 2.96% (Median 2.20%)
MSI 1.83 - 2.82% (Median 2.32%)

Tho the enthusiast community would I think list Gigabyte as the most reliable and AsRock the least and the data would seem to support that consensus. However, it must be recognized that Gigabyte's failure median failure rate of 22 per 1,000 is not a statistically significant next to AsRock's 25 per 1,000

Another source of good information is newegg user reviews. Once the number of reviews gets above 50, it gets somewhat reliable, at 100 or so you can expect the potential error rate to be in single digits. Here's the boards listed in the above performance table with > 50 reviews:

MSI Z97 Gaming 5 - 15% http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130770
Gigabyte Z97X Gaming 5 - 15% http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128709
MSI Z97S Krait SLI 18% http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130801
Asus Z97 Maximus VII Hero - 19% http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132125
Asus Z97 Maximus VII Formula - 26% http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132247
Asus Z97-A - 26% http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132118

Unfortunately, it is so early in the Z170 life cycle that it will take some time before many boards will have a significant amount of user feedback so as to have a high level of confidence in the numbers.

So what particular board you buy is much more important than what logo appears on the board. The MSI Z97 Krait was a terrible gaming performer so anyone who relied on MSI owning the top 3 performance spots would have been sorely disappointed. OTOH, it was certainly relevant that the $105 Gigabyte Gaming 5 and $125 MSI Gaming 5 outperformed the Asus Hero and Formula which were 2 and 3 times it's price.... which is why we used those boards in the great majority of Z97 builds. Our fav build during this period was a Asus Z97 TUF Sabranco (white) while it wasn't the hottest performer, in a white Enthoo Luxe w/ twin MSI 980 Tis (w/ custom painted white highlights replacing the red) is was the most stunning looks wise so giving up a little performance didn't sting much. The TUF series had far less performance hit than the RoG line and the user reviews had about 1/3 th highly negative reviews as the RoG line boards did.

All hat being said, while the Krait Z97 board was terrible performance wise, it also proves the point that (like PSUs and every other component), relying solely on brand name is a fool's endeavor. As we saw in the performance ranking from overclock3d, MSI occupies the top 3 and bottom 2 positions.

Looking at Z170 reviews however, the Z170 Krait is doing quite well, as are the Asus boards that performed poorly with Z97

index.php

index.php


All the Z170 boards seem to be performing within 1 or 2 percentage points of one another in gaming. And tho there's just 19 reviews of the Z170 Krait, only 1 in 5 got the highly negative 1 egg review

So with little else to go on due to the limited data avallable, we can compare board features with similarly priced boards from the competition. Here's how it compares 2 Asus and 2 Gigabyte boards in the Krait's price category. Long links don't work anymore on THG so click on the link below and then copy / paste the jibberish that follows at the and of the newegg.com url

http://www.newegg.com
/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007627&IsNodeId=1&Description=gigabyte%20z170&bop=And&CompareItemList=280|13-132-572^13-132-572%2C13-132-571^13-132-571%2C13-130-868^13-130-868%2C13-128-841^13-128-841%2C13-128-840^13-128-840&percm=13-128-841%3A%24%24%24%24%24%24%24%3B13-128-840%3A%24%24%24%24%24%24%24

Krait supports the highest memory speed at 3600, ... not really sigbnificant
The two Asus boards do not support SLI (2nd slot is x4 max), all the others do .... huge
The two Asus boards have ALC 887 audio solutions, the other three offer the superior ALC 1150 ... huge
The two Asus boards have Realtek 8111-GR networking, the other three offer superior Intel solutions .. slight edge
The two Asus boards offer no USB 3.1 support, the two Gigabytes offer 2 USB 3.1 ports, 1 of which is Type C, the MSI offers four USB 3.1 Gen1 and two USB 3.1 Gen2 ... edge

The Gigabyte GA-Z170XP-SLI at $126 and MSI Gaming Z170A Krait Gaming @ $125 seem to offer the best bang for the buck at the $120-$135 price point.

At $150 - $165, I like the Gigabyte G1 Gaming 3 and MSI Z170A Gaming 3 so far .... Asus isn't on the list because of any particular issue, it's just that the equivalent RoG board costs quite a bit more.

At $180 - $200, again the Gigabyte Z170X G1 Gaming 7 ... concerned about early quality issues with many others I have looked at.... hopefully later steppings will widen the list.

At $250 - $275. the MSI Z170 Xpower Titanium is simply "da bomb" and along with the Gigabyte Z170X G1 Gaming GT are real hot lookers and the Asus Sabertooth mark 1 rounds out this price segment
 
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Solution



Lost of great info their JackNaylorPE, thanks! Like you said, in a large enough sample the reliability of the different manufacturers are close enough as makes no difference. And since I might go through a dozen boards in my lifetime, my experience won't be a representative sample at all. Which means that customer support and service should be more important than which board feels more reliable.

What's been your guys' experience dealing with MSI vs ASUS customer support? I've almost always dealt with the seller (e.g. Newegg, Amazon, etc.) directly for DOD, and they are all very easy to work with. The few times I have needed to deal with the manufacturer, it's usually a pain in the ass. Which brings me back to this MSI board....

So I did go ahead and get the Z170A Krait. It had all the features I needed and the black and white color scheme was enough of a nudge to make the decision. But after a handful of back and forth emails from MSI, I'm feeling a pinch of buyer's remorse. One of the key points of this new build I wanted to try was the m.2 expansion for a boot storage drive. I picked up Samsung's wicked fast 950 Pro NVMe 500GB SSD, and was so excited. Alas, MSI's mobo will not allow me to choose it as a boot option when there's any other storage drives plugged into the SATA ports (they become the only "harddisk" boot option). I can't figure out a way to get the m.2 drive to boot as my primary OS while I use a few secondary drives for storage. I'm pretty annoyed at this point. Here's my favorite verbatim email from MSI on the subject:

Dear customer, have you try press F11 when the system on bring up the boot menu? Does you see the drive over there? Thanks!
Click to expand...
 
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My experience.... from 2002 thru 2011 or so, Asus was king here. It was around that point that I started noticing return e-mails .... e-mails I sent to Asus, were coming back to me from @Pegatron.com Asus created AsRock so as to put themselves in a position to garner a share of the "system builder" (read low budget) market w/o damaging their "enthusiast" reputation. Pegatron is Asrock's parent company so why is Pegatron answering e-mails I sent to Asus for TS and RMA's ? From there it all went down hill. Users were nursed along with the BIOS clock freeze bug, with the first solution being a multi step BIOS clearing, reloading, etc, etc procedure that fixed the problem.... temporarily. Thinking it was gone, I didn't notice it happened again as i don't boot the machine very often. And what happens is ... let's say you booted on January 1, then run windows update on January 20, and finally reboot on January 22. After rebooting Windows reads the frozen BIOS time of January 1st and 3 days later the system thinks it is January 4 when it's really January 26.... imagine what happens when Windows update runs again or what happens to your file backups when working on a file on January 26th, when the system thinks it's January 4th..... yada yada yada ... for several months we were getting told that anew BIOS was coming, finally a formal being made that it would be released 'tomorrow" ... and the it never came. Now when you call TS, they deny any knowledge of the problem, deny that a BIOS was aver announced ... even after you point them to the written announcement on their forums.

That and the 3+ month wait, 18 phone calls and 37 e-mails, for a WS board RMA that left my youngest son with a pile of new video games that he couldn't play on XMas or for several weeks afterwards, while we waited for a working return board from Asus ...er Pegatron (from late October to mid January) were my worst TS experiences, But I have to say it's not like MSI or Gigabyte stands out here. Every TS call no matter who it is seems to start with the obligatory 1st answer "your problem is related to another hardware component that we didn't sell you". But one thing, well two things I will say about Asus is they have the best manuals and UEFI BIOS among the big 4. Other guys are catching up with the BIOS and getting real close but MSI and Gigabyte need to work on their manuals.

As for getting TS, I always prefer to start with an e-mail and then follow up by telephone.... and then keep the guy on the telephone until the problem is solved.

One last thing .... as for the information provided, my goal is not to have you read what my experiences were and have you make a choice because that's what I would have done. My goal is to point you to the information and then have you decide for yaself. You will find that just like sports teams, tech products rise and fall based upon decisions made up high by corporate suits who know little about technology. Think HP when Carly Fiorina arrived and decided that it was a good idea not to release drivers for their products for new OSs because peeps would be spurred to buy new $15k plotters. No, they hacked the previous driver and directed purchasing department to buy Canon next time. Same thing, when the bean counters decided not to make the top of the line IBM laptop anymore as they didn't sell that many. Thing was every laptop roundup in the puter mags would have the IBM A20p on the cover as world's best laptop and tho corporate execs didn't need that power, every one of them walked around w/ a laptop that had the same IBM logo that was on the magazine cover. Now IBM isn't in the laptop market

As the PC market first started to shrink, each manufacturer reacted differently to stay financially healthy. And I can't say the route each took was wrong, I prolly wuda done the same thing. MSI was never the one "on the magazine covers", just looking from the outside with no inside info, it would appear that the route they took, was to get there. All of a sudden, many enthusiasts sites were noting a "changing of the guard" so to speak


http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/msi_z87_gd65_gaming/12.htm

MSI has been using components that meet or exceed MIL-STD-810G for some time as part of its Military Class build philosophy. Parts such as Super Ferrite Chokes that run at up to 35 degree Celsius lower temperatures, have a 30% higher current handling capacity, and a 20% improvement in power efficiency; Tantalum filled Hi-C Caps that are are up to 93% efficient; and "Dark Capacitors" that feature Lower ESR and a ten-year lifespan all tied into a PCB with improved temperature and humidity protections as part of the "Military Essentials" package......In the end MSI's Z87-GD65 is a board that comes with an expansive feature set that includes all your basics and the extras that set them apart such as the V-Check points, upper end audio, Dual BIOS ROMs, KIller Network package, Military Class IV package, and a three-year warranty. Couple that with good looks that carry the dragon theme through the board, and you have a winning combination at $189.
Click to expand...

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/msi_z87_gd65_gaming_review/15

Now and again a motherboard appears that is so obviously brilliant, and so affordable, that we wonder if anything will be able to top it. For a while that crown was held by the ASUS Sabertooth, both in X58 and then P67 variants. Then MSI stole the crown with the Z77 MPower. Looking at the Z87 GD65 Gaming we think it's going to take something extraordinary to top it, such is the perfect storm of price, performance, features and looks.

The switch to Military Class 4 has given us an extremely ready overclocker too. You're always thermally limited when overclocking and the i7-4770K is one of the most demanding around. Considering the amount of cooling we're using we think that although the GD65 is capable of bringing 5GHz from our i7-4770K you'd need a proper water loop to make the most of it.

Performance is outstanding. The stock results were a particular highlight. We know a lot of people still just like to put their CPU in and go, without overclocking it first. Despite how easy it is these days we know that the fear factor still exists. So you'll be glad to know that the MSI Z87 GD65 Gaming really rocks hard even at stock settings. Naturally the overclocking is blistering too, with some OC3D records broken.

MSI have laid the gauntlet down to all the other manufacturers. Gorgeous to look at, blistering performance and all at a very affordable price, the MSI Z87 GD65 Gaming is not only the new benchmark for Z87 motherboards, but probably for all motherboards.
Click to expand...

Being a slow to change kinda guy, when I did my own Z87 build, I went with a $300 Asus board and twin Asus GFX cards all water cooled.... It's was deflating doing user builds afterwards using $125 MSI boards and MSI GFX cards that kicked my Asus based build's tail...and they were on air.

Asus response to a shrinking market OTOH by seemingly to up it's prices, cut TS (farming it out to Pegatron) and cut component quality. Newegg user reviews became very hard on Asus and they were no longer topping the charts in either MoBo or GFX card speed tests. MSI was winning most of these while Giga was getting its fair share of accolades.

I expect we are now seeing a reversal on Asus part.... like MSI, they too are now using MilSpec components, they also have mimicked MSI's board imprinting procedure which I think shows a recognition that MSI's investment in higher quality componentry was recognized by the buying public.... MSI and Gigabyte lead in 9xx series GFX cards for instance while Asus lost their once held dominance.

MSI led the MoBo gaming performance charts w/ Z97 but Asus is now back up there with just about everyone else. ... now nobody is standing out as the performance leader. So other things like TS will factor more into people's buying decisions. The two things that Asus still needs to improve upon are a) The continuing level of disatisfaction of board owners evidence on newegg user reviews and b) the price of their products. I would pay more for a board with a manual of Asus' breadth and detail; I would pay more for what I still believe is a superior BIOS tho that gap has narrowed substantially. But I won't pay $70 or more for that priviledge. And what really stands out to my eyes is that the higher you go up in the price range, the higher the level of dissatisfaction among board owners. If I have a user with a gaming build budget that limits the MoBo to the $125 range how do you recommend a board that won't to SLI or doesn't have ALC 1150 over one that does ?

As for your problem, I have a similar issue in that my DATA ports get randomly reassigned. I set then up So that:

SATA 0 - SSD #1 (C:\)
SATA 1 - SSD #2 (D:\)
SATA 2 - SSHD #1 (R thru U ...these are all shared on network)
SATA 3 - SSHD #2 (V thru W ... again shared (media server and network backups)
SATA 6 - DVD Writer (Z:)

But every once and a while they get reordered and my solution is to shut down, disconnect the data cables to the last 3 an boot....it now correctly recognizes the 1st SSD and SATA 0; then basically rinse and repeat adding 1 more storage device with each shutdown cycle.

Have you tried booting with only the M2 connected ? That's the way I always install the OS ... with only the 1 device connected. I also change all the drive letters to something else and then back to the order I want them in so OS remembers who goes 1st. Windows always wanted to take the 1st partition on 1st drive as C:\ and then 1st on 2nd drive as D:\ and so on before looking at secondary ones.

So I move:

DVD => Z:\ and leave it there
SSD2 => Y:\ and back to D:\
And so on with all others changing to Y:\ and then back to where I want it. Once changed Windows forgets its default ordering.
 
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current have the MSI Krait SLI Z97 and it has been a great board for the passed year. RAM, CPU, GPU overclocked with no problems. great temps and zero driver issues.

have had 4/5 AsRock boards be DOA or die before reaching a year. 2 AM3 & 2 Z87 were crap. 1 AM2 lasted but had terrible driver problems the whole life of it. they were terrible about replacing the 3 of those that died on their own. took months to get it okayed and to wait for them to run their "tests" to verify the problems all 3 times.

had an ASUS Sabertooth for 2 years that was also a great board.
 
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only problem i had here is that using SATA based M.2 you lose a few SATA ports while it is connected.
 
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Yeah, if I leave the other drives unplugged, I can boot to the m.2 ssd just fine. I've actually already installed Win10 on it as well as updated its firmware. But as soon as I plug the SATA drives back in, they become the only bootable storage drive. It's strange. I suspect I'll end up needing a new BIOS from MSI to fix the issue, but I haven't had much luck with TS. For now I'm hoping to come up with a workaround. Someone else who had a slightly similar problem was able to install Windows onto their secondary drive then clone it to the m.2 and that worked for them. So I may give that a shot, though OS installation isn't really my issue. I find it weird to install an PCI 3.0 x4 m.2 slot onto your new board but not have the software in place for it to actually work as intended.

Silver lining: considering all the new components involved in my new build (first time water-cooling), having this m.2 thing as my only major issue (so far) is pretty nice. Plus it's really pretty to look at.
 
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sounds like what i was just mentioning. the SATA M.2 has to have it's marked SATA6 ports empty. there's usually a highlight paint around which SATA ports the M.2 slot needs empty.

 
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Unfortunately, no. I have the secondary SATA SSDs plugged into SATA_3 & SATA_4. The manual points out that SATA_5 & 6 become unavailable when using m.2. Though, I hadn't actually thought to try plugging into 5 & 6 instead. Who knows? Maybe the manual is wrong. Worth at least trying.
 
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