The Z170 market is a confusing one with the main motherboard manufacturers each boasting dozens of products, many of which are extremely similar if not carbon copies of one another. Like Gigabyte and ASUS, MSI is guilty of this market saturation as well, particularly between the $125 and $175 price points where they have no fewer than eleven different motherboards. In today's review we'll be looking at the Z170A Tomahawk AC, an affordable yet extremely feature-rich motherboard that breaks with the sameness the market has been experiencing in some pretty unique ways.

Trying to market Z170 motherboards hasn't been easy since the processors they?re attached to have struggled to distinguish themselves from the generation they replaced. However, the platform itself represents something of a renaissance moment from a connectivity standpoint since elements like M.2, USB-C and numerous other features that used to be only available on the enthusiast-grade X99 platform are now more accessible than ever. An excellent example of these market forces at work is the all new MSI Z170A Tomahawk AC.