MSI Performance B360 Gaming Plus Motherboard review

MSI Performance B360 Gaming Plus Motherboard review

MSI Performance B360 Gaming Plus Motherboard review

today's review is all about Team Blue the e360 gaming plus from MSI be 360 it's not unusual that we look it you know sort of the the other the other chipsets you know Z 370 or da rodders e39 Daisy 390 so you ready to come out but I don't think that's actually like you know intel has got the market segmentation game down so you know the segmentation of the segmentation of the segmentation is the b-36 teenage 370 chipset so I've got an Intel 8700 fresh from micro

Center it still smells like micro Center so yeah yeah micro Center I don't know whatever also got the 970 Evo we're gonna put that in here to be three sixties got a single m dot too so it's exciting let's get into it but first well no let's scroll the intro and then we got a lot to talk about so I always try to do motherboard reviews not as motherboard reviews but like so you could learn something because it's not just about the chipsets I mean I figure that you're reading

this review because you're just interested in the technology or maybe you're looking at buying the B 360 gaming + motherboard or alert it's a pretty good board it doesn't do some stuff it does some other stuff there are other boards that you can get that'll do the stuff that it doesn't do I'm getting ahead of myself B 360 who would want it basically anybody that doesn't want to overclock so yeah Intel CPUs case you're not in the know CPUs that ended the letter K are

what is said to be multiplier unlocked there overclockable some people want to say that you need the K series CPUs to do any overclocking but that's not actually true really what's happened is intel has segmented the overclock ability of their parts so like there they've got the extreme high end of like the overclockable and then they've got like some hot overclockable and there's everything else which is just everything is completely locked down and I would bet because they still haven't really liked the thermal paste is not really that good in the

overclockable parts and so like you could overclock the 8700 2k the overclockable version of the CPU that I have more than most people most people are typically able to hit 4.8 4.9 gigahertz as an all core overclock in the 8700 K some people most it's a little bit of a debate in terms of how many people are able to hit 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 gigahertz those are more unicorn overclocks you typically typically will see those with insanely high in coolers and also people are dumping

hundreds of watts into a CPU that's you know rating it's like 95 watts or in this case is 65 watts 65 watt rating on this i7 8700 so what does all this have to do with the chipset man I'm just I don't really care well if you're not gonna do that extreme overclocking on the K part that obviously the board doesn't need to have that kind of crazy power delivery I mean you don't want to build you know if you're gonna put a v8 engine in a golf cart you know it doesn't it doesn't that doesn't really track it doesn't really hold up like that so you got to build a frame

that's appropriate for the motor and so even though these are not quote unquote overclockable you can still get some some part of an overclock so for example 4.3 gigahertz all cores all six cores no problem if you look at it in this like wait wait wait the base clock is 3.2 gigahertz well side by side and side by side from Intel Ark the 8700 K and the 8700 and you look at its 8700 K 95 watt TDP thermal design power although I'll tell you right now that's a lie 87 heard K he's gonna use a lot more than 95 watts when you're certainly are you know doing that four point

seven gigahertz turbo especially if you're bored and settings are encouraging that to happen on all your cores it might be 95 watts with like one or two cores come on similarly that's 65 watts with this 65 watts is about what you'd get with the base clock of 3.2 gigahertz so you talk about the clock so you look at the eighty seven hundred and eighty seven hundred K unintel arc and your site by signing this fear like wow the 8700 is 3.2 gigahertz a Summerhays 3.7 that's a 500

megahertz a difference that's pretty big yes I would agree that is pretty big the reality is though that with this 8700 you will not see the 3.2 gigahertz base clock unless you're doing something wrong you'll see it I think on om systems like Dell or HP systems that are just like rank-and-file business class desktops I think you would see the 3.2 gigahertz base clock there but even with a B 360 even with lower end boards than this you're not really gonna see the 3.2 gigahertz base

clock ever I can tell you right now because I've already put together a few systems based on these just you know for friends and that kind of stuff I'll get around to making a review on it the 8700 4.3 gigahertz all core overclocked all day long we even saw that on the little mini PC you know the 4.3 gigahertz all day long with its you know constraints living inside a tiny little you know mini PC another thing that most people do not realize about the be 360 chipset is it's

actually a newer silicon than Z 370z 370 is just a revamp of Z 390 to get coffee like out the door to have six cores on the desktop to respond to competition in the marketplace I would say so Intel is working on a replacement z series chips at Z 390 that's gonna have the features of the H 370 and B 360 chipsets yeah B 360 and H 370 are actually newer better silicon then Z 370 who knew it's a thing yeah I mean that seemed crazy so one of the big differences is that it's got

built-in USB 3.1 gen2 the b3 16 HD 7 shifts out how many ports you get a little bit less unbe 360 a little bit more on H 370 also built in Wireless it's called C and VI Wireless and basically Intel's moving a of the network bits of the wireless network card actually under the CPU the way that I have with the wired Ethernet seep you know interfaces for the last several generations now and they put the radios on a name to card so you've got a special m dot two

form factor cards it's not actually m dot to that is just the physical radios that will be used for your wireless card and no other control circuitry or interface circuitry or anything like that it's strictly just the radios and the ethernet part the networking part lives on the CPU it's called CA VI it's a thing and that's supported on B 360 and H 370 motherboard so a lot of them but not all of them will come with wireless and it's usually the see in VI top borrows remains to be seen

how good of a wireless solution that is still some more testing I tested in 83 70 board wireless solution it was pretty good so yeah just something to keep in mind about differences between the platforms and so thinking about all the stuff that I just said hopefully it makes sense to you why you won't see crazy vrm solutions on B 360 and H 370 motherboards because that power curve you know as you go past four point three gigahertz you know to four point nine gigahertz

and beyond that power curve only just gets more insane so you know 65 watts 95 watts 200 watts I mean that's not an unusual power curve for these CPUs because Intel's really pushing it already so what about the other limitation that you see with the B 360 and H 370 motherboards memory speeds so go well it's limited to you know 2666 and it's hard to keep that six core CPU fed with 2666 and it's like wow no not really on the Intel platform memory speeds mostly mostly don't bottleneck the six core CPU that may change if we see an eight core CPU on the

socket although don't count on it but 2666 is is basically fine but the timings are not locked down so even if you've got a de r 4 4000 kit and you want to push this platform B 360 you can just lower your timings given ya the memory is not gonna be clocked at 4,000 but effectively it's the same or it's pretty close to the same because your 4,000 is gonna have higher weight states so states where the memory the CPU is waiting in the memory to do something but even though it's only clocked at 20 666 the CPU is going to wait less cycles on the memory to do something

so in terms of like how much time passes on the wall clock over there it's basically the same between 2666 and 4,000 there are some edge cases you can make you know make a little bit of a conversation about latency the rabbit-hole here actually goes really deep but for practical purposes it doesn't matter too much that they've locked the memory down to 20 666 in fact I actually classified as a lulz Intel fail at segmentation you know in the market that way like it's just it's so pointless like they shouldn't have bothered locking down the memory although it is a little easier on om om z-- don't have to do as crazy stuff designing the board to deal with

memory that's clocked that high because board designers do have a lot to worry about when you're dealing with clocks that high but lowering the latency not really a big deal now if you're on the fence about choosing this platform and you're worried about meltdown inspector now that inspector a very serious concerns they open the door for criminals to basically take control of your entire machine not just your machine I mean they can take control of your machine to the extent that it'll survive a format that's pretty serious as of this video there's nothing like

that in the wild at least that I know of although I'm sure that intelligence agencies around the world are working on that right now but I think it'll be fixed and it's probably going to be a software firmware fix it's not fixed in Silicon obviously the next-generation CPUs er are gonna fix the meltdown inspector type problems you know even AMD on the competing platform has some similar issues although as of this video it doesn't seem like AMD's problems are quite to the extent of intel's and tells problems are actually fairly severe it's been an engineering

problem that's taking them going on two years now trying to so you gonna take the benchmarks that you see around the internet with a grain of salt our benchmarks they're gonna have the meltdown inspector patches installed but you know it's been a continuous treadmill to try to keep up with all the different versions of the fixes that exist and the fixes mess with the the performance so you will see a performance regression of I would say 10 to 20% by the time the dust settles on this and you will see a performance regression of around 10% right now with

the mitigations that are in place for gaming type workloads or anything that is very i/o intensive things that are not super i/o intensive not as bad Intel is really pushing vendors to have a lot of the mitigations off by default I suspect that's because of the performance problems so that's something else to consider when you're looking at this platform so the thing on what the benchmark numbers are things like Adam if you're just you're just hanging on by one or two percentage points for making your decision keep that in mind not to say that I think this is a

bad platform others you shouldn't go with it or or anything like that not at all these are fundamental problems of CPU architecture and the problems even exist in completely different platforms like the IBM Z mainframe system and you have problems too so this is a problem that is gonna have to be overcome with additional innovative computer science and computer engineering so now we're on the 8 is 64 side of things we're able to get the latency down to forty six point five nanoseconds and our memory bandwidth up to almost 40 gigabytes per second

and that's still limited to that 2666 clock speed so I placed it plays to pay with your memory times and pay place pays to play with your memory timings it pays to play with your memory timings if you're into that sort of thing and this is enough of a reduction in latency that you probably will see a little bit of a difference in terms of system performance also oddly this memory which I know to being one one T command rate was coming up as 2 T which should only be I like to 2133 like super compatibility mode so not sure what that's about it's also

possible to optimize this a little bit further from here I think it's like 584 clocks on our refresh which is way too high it's 584 clocks at the 3600 no 3400 is the 3400 kid its 584 clocks at the 3400 speed need to do a little math to figure out what that is exactly a 2666 but my guess is probably around 500 480 something like that so I could even tweak it a little bit from here this is from just five minutes of fiddling with it so your mileage may vary I mean every memory kid's different every CPU is different still technically this is an overclock so bear in mind all

those disclaimers but the next time somebody says an on K CPU is not overclockable you know better so FLE that was interesting you learn something what are we dealing with in terms of specifics on this MSI be 360 gaming plus terms board layout well we've got 2 by 16 slots 1 by 16 slot directly into the CPU the other by 16 slot is wired at PCI Express by 4 directly into the chipset our other PCI Express by 1 slots those are also into the chips now we've got a single

MDOT two that's PCI Express 3.0 by 4 that is also wired into the chipset so if you wanted to run a PCI Express to invite to adapter and an MDOT to on the board that would totally work fine if you want to run you know obtain on board and an add-in you know PCI Express SSD that'll work fine if you want to run SATA a SATA hard drive and you know and add in something else that is all those combinations are completely fine you can even run a high-speed peripheral like a capture card like a video capture card or something like that is PCI Express

by 4 that's connected to the chipset so basically it's okay now you will get a little bit of the bottleneck if you have two high-speed devices that are going through the chipset at the same time because the maximum speed of all of the devices through the chipset it's gonna top out at 4 gigabytes per second so if you've got a really fast video capture card and a really fast iNDOT to potentially there could be a bottleneck there but unless you're capping capturing you know 4k 60fps for 2 - you know 10-bit color depth you're not gonna run into a bottleneck and even the

4k 30 capturing to this 970 Evo which has a pretty substantial write speed it's not get a bottle night through the chipset at the rear i/o we've got a ps2 combo mouse and keyboard port which is great for people like me that are rocking the model in I've got two USB 2.0 ports DVI and DisplayPort so on these boards sometimes you see DisplayPort sometimes you see HDMI sometimes you see a mix this DisplayPort out will actually do 4k 60 Hertz through the CPU it's sort of an odd situation with Intel with HDMI the boards cannot in general the boards cannot

do 4k 60 Hertz through HDMI and the reason for that is because it requires a licensing fee yeah like the HDMI consortium or whoever somebody somebody demands to be greased to have their palm greased for 4k 60 Hertz over HDMI but DisplayPort suffers from no such shenanigans so boards like this that have DisplayPort will work at 4k 60 Hertz this is also true on you know on the AMD platform so you get an AMD CPU that's got a built-in graphics card display for it generally will do 4k 60 Hertz whereas HDMI will not interesting tidbit maybe we

can raise our torches and pitchforks about that because that's pretty dumb I mean come on but thankfully we've got onboard DisplayPort so 4k 60 Hertz the on-board cheap you forgot to do that so we've got three USB 3.1 mixed up Gen one gen - and one is type C so for so you get a total 4 USB 3 ports at the back one type C 3 type a we've also got Intel gigabit Nick that's the i2 19 V and gold-plated audio connectors 6 it's a 7.1 audio solution and the audio solution is the

realtek ALC 892 I think I would have liked to have seen every real tech LC 1220 but hey audio is that important to you get a USB DAC you'll be happier anyway now interesting we do have an auxilary PCI Express power input not necessary but it's there in case you're gonna do some crazy stuff the primary by 16 slot is armored and reinforced there are seven four pin fan headers on this motherboard seven one of them is a day dedicated water pump header but you

know what are you gonna do there are five SATA connections on this the six SATA connection is wired through I think one of the MDOT two slots they just didn't want to have to deal with you know switching the we you know switching the SATA connection between the connector it's on the front edge of the motherboard and they ain't got to slot but hey you know whatever it's fine five SATA connections does anybody even have five SATA devices anymore you get to get a network storage device for that does have a thunderbolt header in case you want to run

thunder Boltzmann's like that your two USB 2.0 headers and a single USB 3.0 this USB 3.1 gen2 on the protocol header on the front in terms of RGB we do have a single 50/50 led header so if RGB is your thing you can totally do that one other thing I'll tell you to be on the lookout for on B 360 motherboards some B 360 motherboards I've seen only have two DIMM slots this particular one has four that's great I think if you're going to get a B 360 month order you should get one of the ones that's got four dimm slots just so you can upgrade at some point in

the future this board also has a legacy parallel port header and a legacy serial port header so if you're still rocking you know the 25 pin ECP parallel port printer you need it for some device or hardware hacking or whatever you just got to get the header it's not in the box speaking of the box what's in the box you get the header and you get two SATA cables that's pretty much it so what's the verdict on this board well even though it's a B 360 it still got sort of that gamer enthusiast UEFI it's got pretty much all the options at least all the options that you can use in

terms of like the hardware I mean you can't load the XMP profile or anything like that because the memory speed limitation but you can still tweak a lot of settings and so laid out really well terms of Linux support no complaints there all the hardware works we're even seeing turbos and Linux up to four point three gigahertz on all cores and 4.6 gigahertz fun one two cores so everything out of the box with Linux works fine the realtek ALC 892 audio codec works fine the intel lan works fine USB mmm the USB 3.1 gen2 B 360 chipset it's ok I got to work out

some kernel bugs depending on the kernel they like the distribution that you use but thankfully this motherboard has two USB 2.0 ports at the back I would suggest that you use your mouse and keyboard with those four the least problems so basically everything is okay on the USB front for Linux as well in terms of memory support well we tried out you know g.skill trident z memory we also tried our G scale sniper X memory and messing with the timings not a problem so overall the verdict from this board I think this is a I mean for this is a really

really good value it's a really solid board it takes all the boxes and you're not gonna be running at that pokey 3.2 gigahertz if you hit the 8700 terms of like you know the i-5 with the i-5 be a better value yeah maybe I mean if you're just doing gaming but not really much of anything else you lose hyper-threading but really a lot else a little bit on the clock speed but really for gaming honestly I don't think it's enough to matter having the extra 6 threads if you're using

this is kind of a workstation or something like that maybe you're looking at upgrading like theater remember the old i7 920's this would be a good replacement for the i7 920 if you were not planning to overclock or anything like that I've gotten anything wrong or you just want to hang out in the forums you should come to the level 1 forums I'm Windell I'm signing out I'll see you there.

MSI Performance B360 Gaming Plus Motherboard review

Are you looking for a traditional red and black GAMING motherboard.. .. and the newest Intel 8th generation Core processors. Check out the B360 GAMING PLUS. It features MSI's latest technologies such as Core Boost. To enhance system stability and CPU performance. This motherboard offers a great performance to price ratio. And it's traditional red and black design go great with many modern day graphics cards. And of-course for a more immersive

gaming experience it also comes with Audio Boost. With 7.1 digital surround sound output and an amplifier, which supports high impeached headphones. And for a lag free online gaming experience.. .. this motherboard also comes with MSI's GAMING LAN, powerd by Intel. To give you bandwidth management to make sure your games are prioritized above other applications on your network. The B360 GAMING PLUS also comes with on-board USB 3.1

GEN2. Either through Type-A or Type-C. So you can connect any fast peripheral or data transfer devices to the back. Besides plenty of SATA ports, it also comes with an on-board M.2 slot. Supporting the latest NVM based SSD's. For super fast loading of games and applications. With its red and black design on the DIMM slots, PCI slots and the heat-sinks.. .. you notice one of the slots also comes with PCI-E Steel Armor. To prevent bending or damaging from the

graphics card or motherboard during transport. In the B360 GAMING PLUS comes with a whooping 7 fan connectors.. .. which you can connect either DC or PWM modes fans to, and control the fan speeds. And one of these fan connectors is a dedicated pump fan header, so you can use all-in-one water cooling solutions with ease. So if you are looking for a more affordable GAMING motherboard with true gaming features.. .. and fancy the traditional red and black design, give the B360 GAMING PLUS a look.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE MSI B360 GAMING PLUS

ModelBrandMSIModelB360 GAMING PLUS
Supported CPUCPU Socket TypeLGA 1151 (300 Series)CPU TypeSupports 8th Gen Intel Core, Pentium Gold and Celeron Processors for Socket LGA1151
* Not backward compatible with older generation of LGA 1151 CPUs
ChipsetsChipsetIntel B360
Onboard VideoOnboard Video ChipsetSupported only by CPU with integrated graphic
MemoryNumber of Memory Slots4×288pinMemory StandardSupports DDR4 2666/ 2400/ 2133 MHz*
* Please refer to www.msi.com for more information on compatible memoryMaximum Memory Supported64GBChannel SupportedDual Channel
Expansion SlotsPCI Express 3.0 x162 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots (support x16/x4 modes)PCI Express x14 x PCIe 3.0 x1 slots
Storage DevicesSATA 6Gb/s5 x SATA 6Gb/s ports*
* The SATA1 connector will be unavailable when an M.2 SATA SSD module has been installed in the M.2_1 slot.M.21 x M.2 slots (Key M)
Support up to PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA 6Gb/s
Supports 2242/2260/2280/22110 storage devices
Supports Intel Optane Memory Ready*
* Before using Intel Optane memory modules, please ensure that you have updated the drivers and BIOS to the latest version from MSI website.
Onboard AudioAudio ChipsetRealtek ALC892Audio Channels7.1 Channels
Onboard LANLAN ChipsetIntel I219-VMax LAN Speed10/100/1000Mbps
Rear Panel PortsPS/21 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse portVideo Ports1 x DVI-DRJ451 x RJ45DisplayPort1 x DisplayPortUSB 3.12 x USB 3.1 Gen2 (SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps) ports (1 Type-A port and 1 Type-C)
2 x USB 3.1 Gen1 (SuperSpeed USB) portsUSB 1.1/2.02 x USB 2.0USB Type-C1 x USB 3.1Audio Ports6 Ports
Internal I/O ConnectorsOnboard USB1 x USB 3.1 Gen1 connectors (supports additional 2 USB 3.1 Gen1 ports)
2 x USB 2.0 connectors (supports additional 4 USB 2.0 ports)Other Connectors1 x 4-pin CPU fan connector
1 x 4-pin water pump fan connector
5 x 4-pin system fan connectors
1 x Front panel audio connector
2 x Front panel connectors
1 x Series port connector
1 x Parallel port connector
1 x 5050 RGB LED strip 12V connector
1 x TPM module connector
1 x Thunderbolt Add-on Card Connector
1 x Chassis Intrusion connector
1 x Clear CMOS jumper
Physical SpecForm FactorATXLED LightingRGBDimensions (W x L)12.0" x 9.6"Power Pin1 x 24-pin ATX main power connector
1 x 8-pin ATX 12V power connector
1 x 6-pin ATX PCIe power connector
FeaturesFeaturesSupports 8th Gen Intel Core, Pentium Gold and Celeron processors for Socket LGA 1151

Supports DDR4 Memory, up to 2666 MHz

MYSTIC LIGHT and Sync: Personalize your PC with 16.8 million colors / 10 effects controlled in one click with the Mystic Light APP or a mobile device

Lightning Fast Game experience: TURBO M.2, Intel Optane Memory Ready. Intel Turbo USB 3.1 GEN2

AUDIO BOOST with NAHIMIC: Reward your ears with studio grade sound quality for the most immersive gaming experience

DDR4 Boost: Advanced technology to deliver pure data signals for the best gaming performance and stability

GAMING LAN, powered by Intel: The best online gaming experience with lowest latency and bandwidth management

MULTI-GPU: With STEEL ARMOR PCI-E slots. Supports 2-Way AMD Crossfire

VR Ready: Best virtual reality game experience without latency, reduces motion sickness

In-Game Weapons: GAMING Hotkey, X-Boost, Voice Boost

EZ Debug LED: Easiest way to troubleshoot

Click BIOS 5: Award-winning BIOS with high resolution scalable font, favorites and search function

GAMING CERTIFIED: 24-hour on- and offline game and motherboard testing by eSports players.