MSI Arsenal Gaming Intel Coffee Lake B360 LGA 1151 DDR4 Onboard Graphics CFX Micro ATX Motherboard

I was looking to build a new desktop for all around usage, medium gaming, video editing without breaking the bank. This motherboard fit the bill nicely. Previously, I had always built my own pc's but over the past few years, I have been using Surface products. You can only do very light gaming and moderate video editing on them. I wanted to bring this one in at around $600-$700. I originally purchased an ASUS Prime B370 and boy was that a horror show. The board came with bent usb header pins and it was DOA. I did quite a bit of research on replacement motherboard at a similar price point. This particular model had been reviewed extensively so I sent the Asus back to B&H (they're really very good about returns) and purchased this from Amazon.From the opening of the packaging the experience was incredibly different. The collateral material was packaged neatly, the instructions were written in a size that you could actually read and the aesthetics of the board are so much better. The board installed without a hitch and posted on the second try. The CPU lock under the cooling fan was undone and MSI's EZ debug LEDS showed the fault. I was able to reseat the CPU and eureka.. I had liftoff!Essentially you can run this motherboard stock out of the box and you can also tweak it. If you are looking to serious overclocking you should consider other options.I seem to be getting really good benchmarks vs similar chipsets and processors (I5-8400) with 16gb DDR4 2666.I am extremely delighted with this setup and would buy another MSI board when I decide to upgrade.I highly recommend this board to anyone who would like a good gaming experience with out going broke. And for you non gamers, this works well for your purposes too.

This motherboard has it all for the price. It has 6 fan headers, which is more than enough to fit all of the fans in almost any case, and it's super easy to work with. I recommended it to one of my friends who was a first time builder, and we had no problem putting his PC together with it. It was nice to have SATA cables that went in two directions, which made it easy to install his hard drives no matter their location. The lighting is nice, it's not to aggressive so it doesn't distract while playing games, and I like the overall color scheme.My one gripe is the location of the power button connectors. They're on the bottom of the board, which makes it harder to plug in the power switch because it's cables come from the top of the case. This is a fairly common problem, so it wasn't too hard to work with. It also doesn't offer overclocking or RAM speeds over 2666mHz, which is a disappointment, but that's standard with b360 motherboards.Overall, I'd recommend the board. It's just nice and easy to work with.

I gave up years ago trying to deal with overclocking. Almost all components nowadays are capable of a 10-20% overclock from the factory as long as they are cool enough to maintain it. This was the primary reason I stopped buying overclock capable motherboards and processors. If you get good cooling you are going to get 10-20% anyway and don't need to spend the extra cash on the overclock capable components.This is a feature packed board for the price. I had a very particular set of ports/features that I wanted and this board had all of them. Easy to put in my mid tower case. Plenty of room and USB hookups for days. This also has some features you generally don't get on a board for around 100% like TPM. I don't need this since I run linux ( o yeah it says only windows 10 and that is a lie. You can install linux as long as it is from a CD > with a SATA connection). The USB's are disabled during install until the drivers are installed unless you run win10 there is an option to enable some pre install drivers that will only work during the win10 install. But if you use the CD you get in Linux just fine.m.2 slot works beautifully with a Samsung 970 Evo in place. Lightning quick since this supports NVMe on the slot. ( with the m.2 in place the SATA 1 connector is disabled however) which is fine since most people don't use all the SATA connectors on the board in the first place. I do have several hard drives but that doesn't matter since I have an expansion card for one of my PCIe lanes that gives me more SATA ports.The BIOS menu is easily one of the best I have ever used. Quick and simple to navigate around and just looks good. Have no complaints about it.Since I did my research ahead of time I knew what to expect. I wasn't really surprised by anything with this board. For a non overclock board with some great features at this price point it is hard to beat. Definitely recommend.

To Simplify my review for everyone looking to buy, EZ Debug lights are amazing for new installers, the motherboard IS rgb, and has lights near the bottom left corner (You can see the neon red line in the picture) and it is controllable with the software. But make sure you have enough cords to plug into all the power slots on the motherboard. ( I go into more detail below)I've installed a motherboard into another pc before, but the size difference was crazy. I was so intimidated whenever i got this thing, it looked so cool, well built, huge. (Made in China, but what can you do) Whenever i was putting my power supply cables into the motherboard, i didn't need many 6-8 pin connectors going to the inside, but this one i did. I see on the motherboard that you need to connect the CPU_PWR, PCI-E Power, and Motherboard power. All 6/8 Pin slots.The problem was that i only had 3 6-8 Pin connectors, and you would think that would power everything i had listed.. Wrong. I had to connect my graphics card as well to the power, and i didn't have enough. So i had to leave the PCIE Power, and just plug straight into my graphics card. I don't know if that is totally needed, because the computer has been tested and still works, i just don't know if it's bad for it in the long run. Bottom line, check your power supply slots, and make sure you have enough cables to plug everything in. Other than that. Great motherboard! Pound for pound it is a great buy!