MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium Conclusion
The MSI X370 XPower is currently priced at $255 from Amazon US which puts it as one of the most expensive X370 motherboards on the market, alongside the likes of the ASUS ROG Crosshair VI Extreme ($350) and the ASRock X370 Fatal1ty Professional Gaming ($250). The board has one of the most unique stylings of any X370 motherboard (even moreso than the ASRock X370 Taichi at $220) which MSI does in fact include a fully silver colored PCB throughout its entirety.
The performance shown by the XPower was pretty average as far as synthetic benchmarks go, but in relation to our game testing, it sat consistently towards the bottom of our graphs, but not far enough away from the mark to signify an ‘anomaly’. Power consumption for such feature packed ATX board proved average as well, despite the additional controlelrs and features on board. As with the rest of the boards we have previously tested on the AM4 socket, none of them have been optimized for DPC latency, but this motherboard was 'best of the rest' behind the ASRock boards we have tested.
There has been some negative feedback by some members of the press in regards to the quality of power delivery on the X370 XPower, as MSI uses the same Nikos PowerPAK PK616BA MOSFETs on this board, the same as the ones on the B350 Tomahawk ($98) which we previously reviewed. This board is nearly 3x of the price with similar power delivery components. Whether MSI felt the need to not overpower the ten-phase power delivery like some manufacturers do, or they were more than happy with the quality of the components, it’s hard for me to comprehend the decision. The design is actually, technically speaking, an eight-channel offering with it being a 6+2 phase with an International Rectifier IR3598 doubler on the SOC side; thus, giving us a 6+4 power phase design overall.
The direction that the XPower branding has gone from, from elite level extreme overclocking to being targeted directly at gamers, is a relatively smart option as far as business decisions go, and the obvious cost cutting on the phases could be attributed to it - gamers don’t really need expensive and overkill power delivery configuration and everything bar the most brutal and world leading overclocks will be more than achievable on this particular board.
While MSI has opted out of including onboard Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, there is a single Gigabit LAN port which is powered by an Intel I211AT controller. A total of eight USB Type-A ports split between four USB 3.1 Gen1, three USB 2.0 ports and a single USB 3.1 Gen2 port are present on the rear panel, and an additional four USB 2.0 and a further four USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A ports can be used via internal headers. A single USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port is featured on the rear panel with the option to add another via an onboard header. The new Ryzen APUs such as the Ryzen 5 2400G ($169) can make use of the included HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort inputs, although I do find it rather interesting that MSI hasn’t opted to save a little cost by not using HDMI 1.4 or spent the additional in another area of the board, given that this motherboard is screaming for discrete graphics card users.
The MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium is a very attractive offering to gamers willing to spend the money on unique aesthetics, baring in mind RGB isn’t bundled to this board without external LED strips. For a gaming system that needs a good NVMe drive, one or two GPUs, and few SATA storage drives, the system does offer pretty much everything a gamer could possibly use; barring the lack of built in Wi-Fi or 10 GbE/TB3.
It’s hard to differentiate the major characteristics on paper of the X370 XPower and MSI’s own X370 Gaming M7 ($200), aside from the aesthetics and a couple of differences in the choice of controllers used. If anything, the general change in direction of branding from overclocking performance to gaming could certainly be clearer as a few things extreme overclockers would be looking for, such as an external clock generator and a slightly beefier power delivery, are no longer part of this brand.
All that aside, the X370 XPower Gaming Titanium has a solid BIOS, a good software package, and with a solid price reduction it would be a much more attractive offering in today’s current market.
Motherboards Tested
- $260 - ASRock X370 Professional Gaming
- $255 - MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium [this review]
- $230 - ASRock X370 Taichi
- $175 - GIGABYTE AX370-Gaming 5 [review]
- $160 - ASRock X370 Gaming-ITX/ac
- $110 - Biostar X370GTN [review]
- $98 - MSI B350 Tomahawk [review]
- $90 - ASRock B350 Gaming K4 [review]
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