[Review]MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon, a fanciful RGB motherboard with AMD R7 2700X!

[royfrosty]

Introduction

I recalled my first Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard was the MSI X99 Gaming Pro Carbon. Back then it was filled with RGB all over the board, a very fanciful motherboard back then.

During the Z170 era, MSI Gaming Pro series are always balancing between value and some slight features shaved off from the higher tier Gaming m7 series. Which is always my “best” value board that comes with some “high end” features from their m7 series. Fast forward April 2017, MSI extended their Gaming Pro series to AMD AM4 socket. Which back then it was one of the “best value high end” motherboard for AMD AM4 socket.

Today we will be looking at the new MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon. Take note, I did not include the word AC in it. Cause the local stores are actually selling the non AC version instead.

Now lets dive in to the unboxing!

Unboxing

[Unboxing Video Coming Soon]

Walkthrough

As usual starting from the top left corner of the board. This board requires 2x CPU EPS 8pin.

Yes for those wondering if your 650w PSU does not have the 2nd 8pin will it still work? Answer is yes it will still work.

There is 1 CPU Fan header near the top VRM heatsink.

Corsair MSI MSI Corsair?

Yes you didn’t see it wrongly, “Jcorsair1”. What is it for? Well it is a Corsair connector “DUH”. It is interesting to see MSI working with Corsair to produce this connector. This connector is actually for addressable lighting PRO RGB LED strip and the Corsair Fan Hub. This is the first time I seen a board that goes for a specific branding for lightings. So Corsair Fans rejoice! You can now connect your fan hubs and RGB LEDs to the board directly and control via software.

NOTE: There is a maximum connection for each components using the JCORSAIR connector.

1. Lighting PRO RGB strip, 7
2. HD RGB Fan, 6
3. SP RGB Fan, 6
4. LL RGB Fan, 5

Just below the Jcorsair connector, there is two 4pin PWM fan headers, labelled as "SYS_Fan3" and "Pump_Fan1".

EZ Debug LED

A 24pin power connector and a traditional EZ Debug LED. Yes sadly this board does not have any debugging 7 segment display for codes. So owners have to rely heavily on this EZ Debug LED to know what are the issues for not booting up.

A USB 3.0 front panel header with another 4pin PWM fan header labelled “SYS_Fan4”

Ample SATA ports

This board comes with a 8 SATA ports. There are six right angled SATA ports and two straight SATA ports.

Just below the six SATA ports you will find the front connector panels. And of cause its 2018, there is a 5v addressable LED labelled as “Jrainbow1”. This allow you to use a 5v WS2812B RGB strip.

 

[royfrosty]

More front panel connectors.

1. JT1 not sure what connector is this for.
2. USB 2.0 front panel header
3. USB 2.0 front panel header
4. USB 3.0 front panel header

From the left to right there is a front audio header isolated from the rest of the components, a “JRGB1” for connecting a RGB 5050 strip that is meant for 12v. The “JTPM1” for TPM module connector. Another 4pin fan header labelled “SYS_FAN2”.

Layer "cake" i mean PCB

A solid 4 layer PCB….

Dual M.2 Slots

Dual M.2 slots, 1 with M.2 Shield. Honestly I think MSI could do better in this department. Still insisting that their M.2 Shield helps to dissipate heat. I’m pretty dissapointed by their m.2 shield. Competing brands are giving it with a much beefier heatsink with proper fins to cool NVME SSD. Just how much can a M.2 Shield at just 2mm thick cool a hot M.2 NVME SSD? Yet alone it does not have any fins.

May be they should start considering to incorporate m.2 into the chipset heatsink. Any way I digress, there is two M.2 slots capable to do NVME RAID at full speed, both supporting 32Gb’s using PCIE Gen 3 x4. However I find the 2nd M.2 slot kinda weird, it is only able to accept up to 2280. Well I’m not really complaining, cause most m.2 NVME goes up to 2280. But it could have been better if both slots are able to handle 22110 size.

Steel Armor PCIE

Apart from the M.2 slots, if you kind of noticed, they have included two PCIE slots that comes with “Steel Armor” for EMI Protection and also for the heaviest GPU. This is to help PCIE slots from breaking apart or sag more when using a long and heavy GPUs.

If you kind of noticed, the last 8x PCIE slot, MSI actually reinforced the mounting points only. No EMI protection though. But hey at least they did something to reinforce the last slot.

Audio BOOST!

This board comes with a “Audio Boost 4” that comes with features like Nahimic 3. Well there is a built in DAC that supports DSD. 120dB SNR/32bit. Capable to push any tough headphones that has up to 600Ohms impedence. Also note that the board is using a Realtek ALC1220 Codec.

A nice chipset heatsink. There is a carbon fibre sticker on it. Which gives a nice texture. Don’t worry, it is hard to remove it. So it won’t drop easily without heat.

Lets take a closer look at the VRM cooling and power phases. There is a total of 10 power phases. 8+2. It is being cooled by some serious heavy heatsink that has proper fins etc.

 

[royfrosty]

However this time round they used a much more powerful mosfets. However they use a YEHRON 4C029 highside (46A) and 4C024 lowside (78A) by On Semiconductor. "Do not quote me on this, this is best to my knowledge of the said mosfet"

RAM slots build like a tank

Another thing I like about MSI is they implemented Steel Armor for the RAM section. It looks really nice to my eyes. Giving a shiny yet reinforced steel. But RAM isn’t heavy. But protecting from EMI would be a small good idea.

Another 4pin Fan header just above the first PCIE slot “SYS_FAN1” header.

IOs and more IOs

Now the last thing, the rear IO.

1. PS2 port
2. 2x USB 2.0 ports
3. Display port
4. HDMI port
5. Clear CMOS button
6. 4x USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type A ports
7. I211AT Gigabit LAN port
8. USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type A port
9. USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type C port
10. 7.1 Audio ports with SPIDIF

BIOS Walkthrough

MSI BIOS would probably be my recommended BIOS. It is my all time favourite and stronghold of MSI. Why? Cause it is the easiest BIOS to use and on top of that, navigating through is a lot simpler than most competing brands out there. It is easy, try it out for yourself to see.

The MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon as usual comes with Click BIOS 5. At start it will bring you to the EZ mode BIOS. You can’t do much but do Auto Game Boost OC, AXMP RAM overclocking, BIOS update through MFLASH, Hardware monitoring and select boot priority.

The rest are CPU, Memory, Storage, Fan information.

EZ mode for the weak, F7 for the hardcores

Press F7 it will bring you to the Classic Advanced Mode.

“Settings tab”

Under the advanced segment

 

[royfrosty]

Boot priority at Boot segment, there is a Auto CLR CMOS function. What it does is that, if the system fails to POST for a couple of times for whatever reason, this function will help to auto clear CMOS for you. Great for fail OC if the board is unable to POST.

“OC Tab”

This will allow you to overclock both your RAM and CPU. Yes as you all can see, I was able to OC my Gskill Ripjaws V 3000Mhz to 3400Mhz effortlessly.

Further down the list you can see the Voltages for vCore, SOC and DRAM.

“Mflash Tab”

For BIOS flashing

“OC Profile Tab”

Quite convenient to save all the overclocking profile.

“Hardware Monitor Tab”

Nothing much here, but a good clean UI design that shows CPU, System, MOS and PCH monitoring. Choose between PWM, DC or Auto mode for fan control.

“Board Explorer Tab”

Detects all the things that are connected to the board.

Now moving on to Test setup.

Test Setup

As you all can see in the BIOS segment, I was only able to hit 4.15Ghz for all cores overclocking. This is mainly because i'm limited by heat as i was using the stock AMD Prism cooler. Yes this is a good cooler, a tall and yet nice direct copper heatpipe.

At 4.15Ghz 1.42v, i was hovering around the high 80degC. However, once i pop in my trusty Cryorig R1 Ultimate Cooler, i was able to get a 4.25Ghz overclock at 1.44v range and was able to maintain OC temps at mid 70degC. So indeed if you intend to overclock it to the fullest, please get a good CPU cooler out there.

The board maximum vCore is at 1.45v. However, the interesting part about the vCore at Auto mode, the 2700x at certain scenarios were able to go above 1.45v. It requires up to 1.48v to stay stable with XFR2 and precision boost to work at 4.3Ghz.

Another thing to note, i was not able to overclock my RAM to 3400Mhz if i paired it with the predecessor 1700X. So i was only able to hit 3200Mhz for it. But the moment i pop in the 2700X, 3400Mhz was no kick.

So here are the specs

I will be comparing the predecessor 1700X and just throw in a 2600X for comparison.

MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon
Cryorig R1 Ultimate Cooler
AMD Ryzen 7 2700X (4.25Ghz OC)
AMD Ryzen 7 1700X (4Ghz OC)
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X
GSkill Ripjaws V 3000Mhz 2x8gb Kit (OC to 3200Mhz)
Crucial M550 SSD
Nvidia GTX 1080Ti (Latest Driver)
Seasonic P1050 1000W PSU

 

[royfrosty]

Benchmark

Cinebench

Cinebench the 2700X indeed blew out its predecessor. Due to the clock speed and slightly faster IPC, it went well above the 1700X in both the single core and multicores segment. This is not complete yet, you can have higher RAM speed to go slightly higher with the 2700X, woot!

Blender BMW

Blender BMW, the 2700X with its process shrink and managed to increase in slight performance. It managed to edge out its 1700X by a tiny bit. But of cause if a 2700X can shave down a cool 19secs, as workload gets longer it will definitely be a much noticeable gap.

Time Spy

Measuring the performance for DX12 CPU performance, the 2700X did remarkably well with scores of 9299.

Now comes gaming, this is where the 2700X will not look very enticing to anybody owning a Ryzen 1. Just like 2600X vs 1600X, the 2700X is performing rather close to its predecessor. Now the question is, is the 2600X worth considering to? Just look out for the 2600X in every gaming benchmark.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

In RotR, the 2700X were just 9.85% faster than its predecessor in the minimum frame rates and 3.28% better in overall average frame rates.

Shadow of War

Another similarity, these results were rather well within their 3% gap range.

Hitman

Interestingly, Hitman were a little better than the previous benchmarks above. This game do rely on clock speed heavily. So no doubt the 2700X did take the cake with a respectable 15.25% lead in the minimum frame rates against its predecessor.

Deus Ex Mankind Divided

There is no surprise here, this game is more of a GPU bound than CPU intensive game. All were performing around the same level from each other.

Metro Last Light

Metro last light were the only game that leverage more on CPU multi cores. Here we can see that the 6 cores variant 2600X doing slightly poorer in the minimum frame rate department with almost 32-34% slower than the 8 cores variant CPUs.

 

[royfrosty]

Power Consumption & Temperature

Power consumption were a little higher this time round despite the process shrink to 12nm. This is also partly because of the XFR2 and Precision Boost 2 working at its best providing most cores to hit a nice maximum frequency of 4.35Ghz on the 2700X. But however things do get a slight power reduction when doing light loads and less CPU bound, this is definitely not within my scope of testing, but what i do noticed that, at stock, the voltage pull for light work loads, it was very conservative in voltage. So in all, i won't be worried about the new Ryzen Zen+ CPUs to be power hungry either.

Temperature wise were kept well within 70degC range. The 2700X is a tiny bit hotter due to the much boosted frequency. But nothing alarming here with my trusty Cryorig R1 Ultimate Cooler.

Conclusion

After using it for almost three weeks as my day to day pc. The MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon really brings me back to X99 over at Intel side. Gaming Pro Carbon is always the mainstream board that offers a slight stripped down version from their Gaming M series. It is always great to see MSI trying to come a board that balance out both features and pricing. Cause simply put it, not everyone wants to pay for features that they don't really need. Apart from pricing, this board is just simple, i wouldn't mind a simple board and yet able to show some blinks!

Now for the breakdown scores....

Performance: The one thing great about MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon, RAM compatibility was not an issue with this board. Having to run three different Hynix based RAMs at their rated 3200mhz. Even Gskill Sniper X was able to hit rated speed of 3600Mhz. Overclocking is indeed great, but somehow i was not able to set any vcore more than 1.45v manually. If i want any higher, i would need to set it to auto instead to go above 1.45v. So i hope MSI would remove the limit. For now i will deduct 0.5 score from this department. Another thing i would like to deduct is the m.2 shield. Come on, a price like this, there are some brands out there offering proper solid heatsink for m.2. 9/10

Aesthetics: This board looks great, the best part of being a Gaming Pro Carbon line up, this board RGB were nicely placed. But somehow i wish they add a diffuser for the board LED backlit. Any way nit picky stuffs. The next thing i like is that they added the Corsair connector, which is again great that they allow users to add Corsair RGB products! Making your overall PC looking great! No wrong in this department 10/10

Features: The X470 Gaming Pro Carbon is a no frill board. A simple one, but i would like to see more being added. MSI would be crazy if they can give in more features for a good price would be even great. There are some things that are missing, such as debugging code for POST codes, and perhaps an onboard USB 3.1 Type C front header. I hope MSI would be able to add a USB 3.1 Type C front headers and debugging POST code the next time round. For now i would rate it at 8/10.

Pricing: At $319 street pricing, this board has what it takes to take on competing boards at the price bracket of $300-$350 range. Comes with ample rear IOs, quite a number of fan headers, great support for Corsair LED support and yet comes with a nice RGB around it. However i can't give this board a full score just yet. Cause at this price bracket, there is Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 5 Wifi, that board is a clear value board as it has WiFi, nice m.2 heatsink and a USB 3.1 Type C front header. Hence this time round pricing wise i'm sorry MSI, but Gigabyte did a better job this time round for both features and pricing. So a fair score of 8/10.

Total ratings: 8.75/10

 

[royfrosty]

Reserved Post 6.............

 

[royfrosty]

Last Reserved Post for future posting.

 

[watzup_ken]

Nice pictures and great review. Looking forward to the complete review. Anyway, too bad they don't have anything of such quality for MATX.

 

[royfrosty]

Nice pictures and great review. Looking forward to the complete review. Anyway, too bad they don't have anything of such quality for MATX.

Thank you for the kind words.

Ah clon22 korkor, take note ah, hope you can feedback to MSI lol.

Personally i think mATX would have a market demnd for it since not only it gives users an almost full ATX capabilities just 1 less PCIE slot. But overall it gives users more flexibility to choose a smaller frame casing.

 

[Encrypted11]

Nice pictures and great review. Looking forward to the complete review. Anyway, too bad they don't have anything of such quality for MATX.

Now ITX is the red headed stepchild. mATX is heading there too.
Any mobo vendor that does a decent mATX will indeed shine instantly.

 

[clon22]

Nice pictures and great review. Looking forward to the complete review. Anyway, too bad they don't have anything of such quality for MATX.

Yeah, they playing it safe always.

Thank you for the kind words.

Ah clon22 korkor, take note ah, hope you can feedback to MSI lol.

Personally i think mATX would have a market demnd for it since not only it gives users an almost full ATX capabilities just 1 less PCIE slot. But overall it gives users more flexibility to choose a smaller frame casing.

Thanks bro, will feedback them and ask again too.
Yeah, looking for smaller and more compact build nowadays.

Now ITX is the red headed stepchild. mATX is heading there too.
Any mobo vendor that does a decent mATX will indeed shine instantly.

I kpkb them on the ITX for years.(literally)

 

[Illusionist_85]

I gian to upgrade mine too

Sent from 穷挫矮胖永独 using GAGT

 

[Encrypted11]

I kpkb them on the ITX for years.(literally)

Computex remind again

 

[clon22]

Computex remind again

Asked many times liao. :/

 

[royfrosty]

I gian to upgrade mine too

Sent from 穷挫矮胖永独 using GAGT

Go for it man.

 

[clon22]

Go for it man.

Need to get these rams liao.
These rams will change the whole memory scene.
When budget and high-end overlaps, a small category is formed.

 

[Illusionist_85]

Go for it man.

prefer those itx board le

 

[stussyking]

Don’t mind me asking the bundled storemi for X470 can be used only with second gen Ryzen cpu ? Or bundled with mobo only , no need second gen cpu?

 

[royfrosty]

Don’t mind me asking the bundled storemi for X470 can be used only with second gen Ryzen cpu ? Or bundled with mobo only , no need second gen cpu?

Its a download software over at amd webby.

https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/store-mi

It must be chipset 400 series to support this feature.

If you are on chipset 300 series it is called Enmotus FuzeDrive.

Its more of a chipset features not cpu features.