MSI Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon Motherboard Review
A Closer Look At The MSI Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon Continued
The heatsinks on the MSI Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon are black anodized aluminum. The VRM heatsinks have a carbon fiber inlay and the PCH heatsink has a applique that gives the look of carbon fiber with a metallic MSI logo.
MSI uses their usual NIKOS Semiconductor MOSFETs in the form of one PK616BA and one PK632BA per phase driven by Intersil ISL6625A’s. You’ll notice that not all phases have ISL6625A drivers and that is because the ISL96856 has three built-in drivers (a pair on one output and one more on the other) and all of them are used.
For the System Agent power, MSI uses a Richtek RT8125CGQW single phase buck PWM controller right at the tail end on the left side of the CPU socket.
The DIMM slots are dual latching and support DDR4 modules and support a maximum speed of 3600 MHz overclocked. MSI uses the same NIKOS Semiconductor MOSFETs as the CPU which are the PK616BA and one PK632BA.
ASMedia ASM1142 is responsible for controlling the USB 3.1
There are a pair of ASMedia ASM1467’s that are responsible for driving the NGFF or M.2 interface.
The CMOS on the MSI Z170A Gaming Pro Carbon is a Macronix International MX IC MX25L12873F 128M-bit.
For the audio solution, MSI paired up Realtek’s ALC1150 with a pair of Texas Instruments OP1652 amplifiers.
Fan control, temperature monitoring and voltage monitoring is managed by Nuvoton’s NCT6793D-M super I/O.
