MSI B360-A Pro, Intel B360 Motherboard - Socket 1151 [7B22-012R]

 At the same time, the chipset natively supports a M.2 slot connected via PCIe for the particularly fast NVMe SSDs as well as Intel Optane. Socket 1151 motherboards with B360 chipset form a good basis for budget gaming PCs and home office computers.

The features of the MSI B360-A Pro at a glance:
2x PCIe (3.0) x16 (x16 / x4) & 4x PCIe (3.0) x1
1x M.2 (PCIe 3.0x4) / 5x SATA 6G
1x USB 3.1 Type A & Type C each
A total of 4x USB 3.0 and 6x USB 2.0 (internal & external)
Supports max. 64 GB DDR4 RAM up to 2.666 MHz
7.1 HD audio with 8 channels
The MSI B360-A Pro in detail
The MSI B360-A Pro ATX motherboard has two PCIe x16 slots, one with full 16 lanes and the other with four lanes attached to the chipset. For plug-in and expansion cards, the board has four PCIe x1 slots. The two PCIe 3.0 x16 slots support AMD's CrossFire technology and allow the use of two graphics cards.

The M.2 slot, which is connected via four PCIe 3.0 lanes, supports the NVMe protocol and, in combination with a corresponding M.2 SSD, enables a data transfer rate of almost 4 GB / s. This is about eight times faster than a SATA 6G connected SSD! Additional drives such as SSDs, HDDs and optical drives can be connected via five SATA 3.0 ports. A maximum of 64 GB of RAM with a clock speed of up to 2,666 MHz can be accommodated in four DDR4 DIMM slots.

On the I / O panel, the MSI B360-A Pro provides two USB 3.1 ports, one of which is a particularly thin and two-way plug-in type C port. USB 3.1 ports are twice as fast as conventional USB 3.0 ports with maximum speeds of 10 Gbps! Other peripheral devices can be connected via two USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0 slots.

One DVI and one Displayport port each for image reproduction via the integrated graphics unit of the processor are also located on the I / O panel. For the output of the on-board sound, the motherboard has six 3.5 mm jack outputs. The internal ports include a COM port and a TPM header, six fan connectors, a water pump header, two USB 2.0 and one USB 3.0 headers.

Technical details:
Format: ATX
Chipset: Intel B360
Socket: 1151 (for Intel CPUs of the 8th core generation ("Coffee Lake"))
RAM: 4x DDR4 (max .: 2.666 MHz, max 64 GB)
Dual-Channel
Slots (physical):
1x PCIe 3.0x16
1x PCIe 3.0 x16 (electric x4)
Compatible Multi-VGA Configurations: AMD 2-Way CrossFire (Quad GPU)
4x PCIe 3.0x1
Internal connections:
5x SATA 6G
1x M.2 (PCIe 3.0 x4, 2242/2260/2280/22110)
1x COM port header
1x TPM header
1x Power LED & Speaker header
1x CPU fan (4-pin)
1x water pump header (4-pin)
5x enclosure fan (4-pin)
1x front panel audio connector
2x USB 3.0 (one header)
4x USB 2.0 (two headers)
1x LPT header
1x SPI header
1x TBT header
External connections:
1x PS / 2 keyboard / mouse
2x USB 3.1 (1x Type-A & Type-C each)
2x USB 3.0
2x USB 2.0
1x RJ45 LAN
1x DisplayPort 1.2
1x DVI-D
6x audio
Power supply:
1x 24 pin EATX
1x 8-pin ATX 12V
1x PCIe power (6-pin)