MSI Z170 Krait Gaming good for OC?

[kampy4]

I'm a first time builder and was wondering if the MSI Z170 Krait was good for gaming and overclocking.

MSI Z170 Krait Gaming LGA 1151 socket

 

[glamdringfh]

For almost exactly the same price as the MSI Krait either of these two motherboards would be better choices:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170MX-Gaming 5 Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($144.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $144.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-17 11:22 EST-0500

Motherboard: Asus Z170 PRO GAMING ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($140.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $140.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-17 11:23 EST-0500

 

[JackNaylorPE]

I can't speak to the Z170 series from personal experience as we're still giving the channel another two weeks to clear out all the old stepping boards. But with the Z97 series, the Krait was an absolute bomb. The MSI and Gigabyte who have the same model (Gaming 5) were way better.

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%

Now looking at Z170 series we are not seeing those huge differences ... so far. pretty much all the reviews I have read on Z170 have the boards performing within 1 or 2% of one another. But the RoG boards are still waaaay overpriced.... hard to argue towards getting the $300 board over the $150 and hard to argue for a RoG board when the competition is $50 - $90 cheaper with similar or better performance, componentry and features.

I'd echo the Gigabyte Z170 Gaming 5 recommendation from above or MSI Z170 M3 / M5

I can't get behind the Asus Z170 pro tho ....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132567

Not with 1 in 4 people who own it giving it a very unflattering 1 egg rating on newegg.

 

[Victorion]

MSI Z170 is very easy to overclock via the UEFI. Manual overclock usually gets higher results.

So in essence, are you looking for an easy way to overclock, it´s a great motherboard, if you like to push your cpu to the limits, you may be better of with a cheaper motherboard thats not MSI.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Since Z87, we have gotten higher overclocks with MSI Gigabyte than Asus but that's just anectodotal experience on a few dozen builds.... we have a Gigabyte SOC ($155) build and a MSI Gaming 5 ($125) build that blew my personal Asus Formula ($300) and Asus Hero builds away ... results confirmed by the above graphic. But I have not seen anything on Z170 that shows a similar disparity.

Have you found any test sites that you can point to that show an advantage on Z170 boards ? To date, I haven't seen any brand / model doing significantly better than anyone else ?

I do have to say that the auto overclocking on the MSI Z170 Titanium is outstanding ... numerous reviewers have been quite impressed. Love the little remote OC board too. Since we are not doing Z170 builds yet, until alter steppings and more mature BIOSs arrive, I have not been digging much and don't know how it's been implemented on less expensive boards. But unless you are building an aesthetic showcase, it's hard to recommend a $300 board given the lack of any real performance increase that we're seeing on Z170. And in the first iterations of the BIOS, while auto OC was a breeze, fine tuning certain aspects was cumbersome in manual mode.