MSI X370 Krait Gaming Motherboard Review

MSI X370 Krait Gaming – X370 Chipset
AMD Ryzen 1700  (3.0Ghz) Octo Core 8 x 4MB L2 Cache 16MB L3 Cache
Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4
1x nVidia GTX 980Ti
2x GeIL EVO PC4-25600 16GB DDR4 (16-16-16-36)
Crucial  MX300 750GB SSD
HP dvd1260i Multiformat 24x Writer
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1050 Watt PSU
Windows 10 Professional 64bit

Aorus AX370 Gaming 5 – X370 Chipset
AMD Ryzen 1700  (3.0Ghz) Octo Core 8 x 4MB L2 Cache 16MB L3 Cache
Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4
1x nVidia GTX 980Ti
2x GeIL EVO PC4-25600 16GB DDR4 (16-16-16-36)
Crucial  MX300 750GB SSD
HP dvd1260i Multiformat 24x Writer
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1050 Watt PSU
Windows 10 Professional 64bit

Gigabyte GA-990FX-Gaming - 990FX Chipset
AMD FX-9590 X8 Black Edition (4.7Ghz) 4 x 2MB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache
Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme
1x nVidia GTX 980Ti
2x GSKill RipjawsX PC2133 4GB DDR3 (9-10-9-28)
HyperX 3K 240GB SSD
HP dvd1260i Multiformat 24x Writer
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1050 Watt PSU
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit SP1.

This review marks the first X370 based motherboard in the Hardware Asylum review database which has some unique disadvantages.  First we are using a Ryzen 1700 for testing which is still quite fast but not top of the line.  The CPU does feature SMT to help make things fast in multi threaded benchmarks and may throw the charts off for certain benchmarks and may show very little difference in others. 

Our motherboard testing suite has been compiled to subject the system to a variety of different scenarios that help uncover some of the subtle differences in motherboard design.  Normally these differences are driven by the processor and BIOS programming but with the advent of an IMC and PCI Express moving to the CPU we have discovered that raw performance numbers are virtually identical across the systems.  

Our new approach is to look at total system performance and minimize the variances.  The results will tell us how the system responded as a total package and also give us something to use in our comparisons.