MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon AC Review

The MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon AC is here, will it race ahead of the competition or suffer from an overheated engine!?

The new AMD Ryzen 2000 series CPUs are here and they've picked up right from where their extremely impressive and successful Ryzen 1000 counterparts had left. Ofcourse these CPUs as AMD had promised are backward compatible to the same AM4 socket on the existing X370 and B350 chipset motherboards but then some new features such as XFR 2.0 and Precision Boost 2 that these bring to the table require a new motherboard chipset only and only if one is planning to build a new system from scratch. So here we are today with the new X470 PCH motherboards flooding the market and even though they are technically the same as their X370 counterparts these offer some new tits and bits and not to mention much more refined and revamped aesthetics. Thanks to MSI today we I'm publishing my first ever review of these new motherboards and I'm super excited as this is my favorite lineup of the MSI lot, we have with us today the MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon AC motherboard for review!

Since some time now the Gaming Pro Carbon lineup has been the mainstream king from MSI and has always proved its worth both in Intel and AMD sides alike, to be honest I've not come across a single one of these that weren't worth the money so, my hope are already high here! With a price tag of $180 this is one of the cheaper X470 motherboards out in the market with enough RGB, dual M.2 slots, a robust VRM and plenty of IO options including a WiFi adapter from Intel!

What's in the Box!?

MSI has a different color scheme for each of its motherboard range and the same goes for the Carbon series motherboards that pretty much like its previous generations is, well mostly black with hues of colors signifying its RGB nature.

The front doesn't have much to divulge in terms of feature set nor has an image of the motherboard instead the entire real estate is occupied by a dark and mystical image of the IO cover so bye bye to the god old sports car!

The back unlike the front is printed to the brim with features! A
detailed marked diagram of the motherboard is printed in one corner
highlighting all the physical features and on the right we see features
such as the Mystic LED, Twin Turbo M.2, USB 3.1 briefly explained.

Open the box and you'll find the motherboard in an anti-static bag
resting on top of the bottom compartment that houses all the
accessories.

On the accessories front the X470 Pro Carbon AC is quite humble yet
provides all the accessories needed to get one started. We have a WiFi
Antenna installation guide, User’s manual, Cable labels, Driver and
utility DVD, Quick installation guide, Registration insert, SLI HB
Bridge, USB 2.0 header extension cable, I/O Shield, Two SATA cables, 2 x WiFi Antennae, Screw for PCIe card,
Rainbow RGB LED Extension cable 80cm and
Y-splitter RGB LED Extension cable 80cm.

Closer Look and Features

MSI went low key with this one over here aswell. Simply placing the
motherboard out of the box shows the stark reality that the motherboard
is indeed different from what the usual trend is going on in the
motherboard market today.

The X470 Gaming Pro Carbon is one of the few motherboards out there that
shout elegance from every corner! Its a full matte black product with
highlights of carbon fiber vinyl on the I/O shield, PCH while certain
areas are highlighted by white plastic cover accentuated by metal strips
and underlying LEDs that can be used as per one's own whims.

Looking at the CPU socket area we realize that it is extremely clean and
specious with ample space to accommodate big air coolers aswell. The socket right in the middle is a AM4 which is the same as that on the previous generation X370 and like boards. This makes the entire new AMD Ryzen 2000 series compatible with previous gen motherboards after a simple BIOS update and nothing else giving you more value for money!

DIMM slots on the reinforced by metal shields that not only work as an
EMI shielding to the RAM sticks to ensure hindrance free performance but
also imparts tensile strength to the slots in case one uses tall or
heavy Memory kits like my Kingston HyperX Predator.

These support a maximum of 64GB DDR4 memory kit working at a maximum
frequency of 3466Mhz. Also the mounting mechanism is changed and both
the locking brackets need to be opened prior to DRAM installation.

Along the bottom of the motherboard are two of the eight SATA III ports
strangely isolated from the other six located on the right side near
the PCH which could make cable management tricky.

Turn your gaze towards the PCIe area and we see three PCIe 3.0x16 slots
and three PCIex1 slots for devices of a bygone era! Two M.2 slots is
also provided that we'll discuss later on.

Two of the three full sized PCIe slots are armored to support large and
heavy graphics card while the bottom most is partially reinforced with metal clips for added support giving the board the following configuration in SLI or CrossFireX:

Single Card: 16x/0/0/

Dual: 8x/8x/0/

Tri: 8x/8x/4x/

The PCIe Slots have three LED embedded at the bottom and lit up red when
the slot is populated by a graphics card. They turn up white when the
graphics card installed is using less than 16xPCIe lane.

A notable fact over here is that in ATX board like this you tend to find
seven PCIe slots in total with four full length and three PCIex1 but in
the MSI X470 Gaming Pro there are only five eliminating the top most
slot. By doing this MSI cleverly managed to shift the DIMM slots down by
half an inch which in-turn cleared out some space in the CPU area and
above it giving one the flexibility to choose from a range of beefy CPU
air cooler without any compatibility issue.

We also see two M.2 ports here out of which the top one is shielded
and has 4xPCIe3.0 lanes to it for full bandwidth of 32Gb/s but the one near
to the bottom has only 2 PCIe lanes making ti usable for SATA drives as
in case one uses a NVMe drive they'll only get half the speed there. Once populated with a SATA drive you will surrender one SATA III port while populating a NVMe drive in the top slot won't have any effect on other connectivity features.

For the IO panel we have two USB 2.0 and five USB 3.1 ports, one USB
Type-C port, LAN port, audio output, one PS2 port, clear CMOS button, WiFi and Bluetooth antenna connection ports, a
display port and an HDMI port.

Resolutions up to 1920×1200 at 60Hz are supported on the single-link
DVI-D port, while HDMI offers 4K at a low refresh rate or lower
resolutions (such as 1080P) at 60Hz.

On the left side of the board we have the Audio Boost 4 technology
powered by a Realtek ALC 1220 5-channel CODEC which is an upgrade to the
ALC 1150 used previously by most of the manufacturers and protect by an
LED illuminated isolation strip to prevent any static distortion. This
arrangement is solidified with gold plated Chemi-con capacitors and
three Texas Instruments  OP1562 op-amps to power headphones and provide a
surround sound experience.

The CPU is powered by an 12+1 phase Military Class-5 power delivery system
controlled by a NIKOS PK832BA PWM controller and constituted of
10-years rated Titanium Choke and Black Caps. This is not an all digital
power delivery system but a reliable one for sure being powered by twin eight-pin EPS 12V connectors for enhanced stability and extreme overclocking, though one is fine with using any one of the two for daily use.

VCore and VccGT phases are handled by a IR 35201 3+2 phase PWM controller
on this motherboard which is a good configuration and I expect to see
some impressive and stable overclocking results delivered by the X470
Gaming Pro Carbon AC.

Four ASMedia ASM1480 multiplexers are responsible for routing the PCIe lanes between the two silver x16 slots while some of the USB 3.0 and 3.1 USB ports on the board are controlled by the Asmedia ASM314 chip to shed load from the CPU and the Intel's I211AT Gigabit LAN controller is also in place to take care of the connectivity.

BIOS and Bundled Software 

BIOS Overview 

UEFI BIOS is getting more and more common with each manufacturer opting
for it due to its simple and flexible interface along with the option to
navigate via a mouse rather than a keyboard exclusive BIOS. MSI is no
different and has offered not one but two versions of BIOS, EZ and
Advanced versions, with the MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon AC so as to suit every
customer's needs.

On boot up by default you'll be greeted with a more comprehensive and
detailed EZ BIOS screen. This is a crammed up screen that has the
details about all the components installed on the board along with
options laid out neatly under clear tabs on the left side. If you want
to change fan speeds, maybe boot devices, or use its automated
overclocking function or A-XMP, you can do so quickly and easily.

This is a much preferred version for the beginners and though it comes
with a Game Boost Knob on the top left its useless since the Gaming Pro Carbon
doesn't support this feature. The "Memory Try It" feature is as always
working well on this motherboard aswell and provide some easy
overclocking features on the click for the RAM provided you don't expect
too much here since we are talking about a Ryzen platform who's
Infinity Fabric requires you to pay some attention and do some prior
homework.

On pressing the F7 key you'll be teleported into the Advanced BIOS
version or the traditional MSI UEFI BIOS version. This is a version that
all the overclockers will love since the settings are broadly laid out
with tab heading like Over Clocking Settings itself. A plethora of
features are there out of which I'm showing you a selective few.

Bundled Software

This is the era when manufacturers provide customers with not just a
motherboard and utility softwares that act more like blotwares if
nothing else. Gigabyte App center is already what I've reviewed a lot of
time & it has never failed to impress but MSI is no less rather  a
bit more refined in their approach.

The heart of the software set is the MSI command set which gives you
general features and information regarding the CPU, GPU, Fan Speed, IGP
and the Game Boost knob...again!

Also one beautiful graphical window is there that provides you with
temperature readings of each component & even tell you where they
are located on the board.

The gaming app section is something that you'll  be familiar to if you
are a MSI graphic card owner. It give you all the information and
tweaking options related to your GPU and you can select which vital stat
you want to see on your screen. Also you can adjust mouse sensitivity
and assign hot keys to your gaming mouse from here making it a one stop
solution for gaming.

Another added feature this time is the support of wireless control over
the MSI Command Center which can be achieved via an App for your cell
phone that allows full control over the features of the motherboard
including adjusting voltages and frequencies aswell!

Benchmarks and Overclocking 

The AMD Ryzen 2700X comes bundled with a newly designed Wraith Prism RGB Air cooler designed by Cooler Master and is enough to keep you going for your daily use but since we are bench-marking here and my ambient temperature is not exactly very low in this Indian Summer weather I've decided to go the AIO way using the Cooler Master MasterLiquid Pro 280 but still I'll drop in an image with the Wraith Prism for you to look and admire maybe if you are into RGB and stuff.

Before I talk any further first let's take a glance at the test bench
configuration for this test which is well optimized for the processor
and motherboard we are using here -





CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X

Motherboard: MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon AC

RAM: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 16GB 3200Mhz

Cooler: Cooler Master MasterLiquid Pro 280

Graphics Card: MSI RX 580 Gaming X 8GB

Storage: Corsair Neutron XTi 480GB

Secondary Storage: ADATA XPG SX8000 256GB M.2 SSD

Power Supply: Cooler Master V1200 Platinum 1200W

OS: Windows 10 64-bit

Our system was fully stable from the get go with no issues at all even in enabling the A-XMP profile on the memory to the rated 3200Mhz. Temperatures obviously are monitored via Ryzen Master utility and a few points worth mentioning here are that firstly the CPU hits 1.5v when under extensive load which even with an AIO cooler generates quite a lot of heat and hence the CPU clocks down to 4.08Ghz on all cores. Overclocking is easy on Ryzen 2700X on the MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon AC, you can simply leave the voltage to auto and play around with the multiplier or you can adjust both depending upon your choice and moreover cooling solution. I managed to hit a stable 4.2Ghz on all cores using 1.4v and the results were significantly higher however anything above that was too much for the CM MasterLiquid Pro 280 to handle but I'm sure one can easily hit 4.3-4.4 using a bigger AIO or best a custom cooling loop.

AIDA64 Cache & Memory Benchmark

AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a great tool to bench your CPU and RAM in
terms of their read-write-copy abilities. Our Ryzen 2700X along with the Trident Z RGB shows impressive results and we see that memory scaling sure has improved with the new Ryzen 2000 series.

AIDA64 GPGPU x64 CPU

The reason for including this benchmark was to simply observe the AES
and Hash Test which is a determent of how easily your CPU or GPU can
crunch complex calculations and higher score is always regarded better.

7-zip

7zip is a compression and decompression program that utilizes the
processing power of the CPU alone. It is a synthetic benchmark that
gives results very close to real life scores.

Cinebench R15

Cinebench uses Maxon's Cinema 4D engine to render a photo-realistic
scene of some shiny balls and weird things (we miss the motorbike). The
scene is highly complex, with reflections, ambient occlusion and
procedural shaders so it gives a CPU a tough workout.

As Cinema 4D is a real-world application - used on films such as
Spider-Man and Star Wars - Cinebench can be viewed as a real-world
benchmark.

wPrime 

wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that
tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a
recursive call of Newton’s method for estimating functions.

3DMark Fire Strike Extreme and Time Spy

Fire Strike Extreme and Time Spy by 3DMark is a test suit that plays a cinematic scene to
determine the FPS, GPU temperature and CPU temperature scaling
everything via a cumulative score. These are a great tool to benchmark your
GPU since the render is GPU dependent especially Time Spy which is D12 based and is a direct reflection of modern day gaming performance that utilize DX12 more effectively.

PCMark 10

PCMark is an effective tool to bench and see the capacity of the system
to handle day to day tasks like video conference, web browsing etc to
professional tasks like rendering. Its a great tool to judge the overall
potential of the system. With lower VRAM but higher clocked RAM we can
see minor difference in the two systems here which can be neglected as
in real life it wouldn't be noticeable.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Its old but still extremely effective to benchmark and one of my personal favorites. Using DX12 the settings are set to Very High preset at 1080p resolution with the graphics card set to stock with no additional tweaks be it manual or through the provided utility.

Assassin's Creed Unity 

The latest installation of Assassin's Creed is set in Egypt and the toll that it takes on the graphical engine and CPU is heavy in fact its strong enough to brings down most of the modern rigs on their knees. The quality is set at Very High preset at 1080p.

CrystalDiskMark 5.0.2

Corsair Neutron XTi 480GB SATA SSD

ADATA XPG SX8000 256GB NVMe SSD

CrystalDiskMark is a disk benchmark software that analyses different
types of hard drive. Giving sequential benchmark write and read
statistics in MB/s. A simple program that is very useful.

My Verdict 

AMD has yet again hit the jackpot and given the main stream consumer something too aspire for and the existing Ryzen owners something compelling enough to make and upgrade, even though the older Ryzen is perfectly competent enough *wink*. The Ryzen 7 2700X in focus today is more tha enough for anything one would like to co with their PC and clearly beats the Ryzen 7 1800X in raw performance and offers improved gaming aswell as memory scaling which is an extremely welcome move all with the goodness of a bundles Wraith Prism RGB cooler!

Talking about the motherboard manufacturers like MSI well they have done a splendid
job when it came to designing & revamping the motherboards. The MSI X470 Gaming Pro
Carbon AC is a breath of fresh air and its worth mentioning that MSI has
been constantly changing and evolving their Pro Carbon lineup as per
time and user feedback. The X470 Gaming Pro Carbon has an entirely new
design which is infact a refined version of the X299 Gaming Pro Carbon
which is a beautiful motherboard in its own rights.

MSI cleverly ditched the redundant SATA express and U.2 connector to
implement dual M.2 connectors along with fully functional tri PCIe slot
configuration with a bunch of USB 3.1 ports all working at the same time
thanks to the brilliant use of the PCIe lanes that the X470 PCH and Ryzen CPU has to offer. Overclocking wise the motherboard offers enough VRM to keep the CPU steady at a very respectable frequency provided you have the cooling solution to keep dissipate all that headt the CPU generates when locked at all cores. On the down side the motherboard does lack some vital on board
buttons or indicators such as a Debug LED which is vital to almost ever user. Also the LEDs are a bit clumsy to
control and the Mystic Lights software needs some tweaking from MSI's
end to make the whole motherboard a bit more appealing.

The LEDs are yet again meticulously implemented by MSI on a pure black
board and nifty features such as Memory Try it! in the BIOS are a
welcome move. For a motherboard that costs around $180 its
a  steal deal for almost anyone out there who's on a budget.

"MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon AC is a Pro in terms of balance between much
needed features, distinctive yet elegant looks and to the point
pricing. Highly recommend to anyone who's willing to buy the new X470
platform without blowing a hole in their pocket!"

Pros -

• Elegant Looks


• Handles overclocking well


• Solid build quality


• Aptly Priced


• RGB implementation is subtle and effective 


• Has WiFi and Bluetooth

Cons -

• No onboard Debug LED


• Bundled Software such as Mystic Light needs refinement

I give it a 8/10 earning our Gold Award!