MSI B360 Gaming Plus & B360 Gaming Arctic Review: Fraternal Twins On The Cheap

Board Features

The B360 chipset is intended to be more of an entry level into the latest and greatest CPUs from Intel than it is to pour on a number of features which can drive costs up. Users will not generally find multiple items like dual NICs or dual M.2 slots. That said, the twin boards offer users most of what Z370 does, except it doesn't overclock. The boards both include USB 3.1 ports out back, a single M.2 slot, and Intel-based networking with the I219-V. The board includes RGB LEDs for the eyes and the Realtek ALC892 codecs along with the Nahimic software for the ears. Overall, these are fairly feature rich boards, especially for the lower price it fetches compared to most Z370 boards. 

Below we have included an image of the block diagram from the motherboard manual. Worth noting here is the SATA ports share with the single M.2 slot. When a SATA based M.2 module is used, SATA port 1 will be disabled. Also, the board supports AMD Crossfire technology as the second full-length PCIe slot is x4 and fed from the chipset (NVIDIA requires x8 bandwidth). 

Test Bed

As per our testing policy, we take a high-end CPU suitable for the motherboard that was released during the socket’s initial launch and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the processor maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC sub timings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend our testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.

Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives, in essence, an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency/monitoring priority, overriding memory sub-timings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.