Board Software

MSI's Center software offers the advantage of not having to install large swathes of stuff you don't want or need and instead just focus on a select few items that you do, such as fan control or lighting. Cooling Wizard and Mystic Light for RGB lighting are the essentials here, although things aren't as slick or snappy as they are in ASUS Armoury crate, even if that installation is a little more bloated.

There are basic overclocking controls for frequency and voltage, but these are focussed on manual options so have limited scope if you're mainly focusing on PBO tweaking. Mystic Light has everything you need for RGB lighting control, including the ability to synchronize with memory modules with the usual effects or static colors. Cooling Wizard does a decent job of mimicking the EFI's fan control and even allows you to switch between to the EFI setting and your new one. Sadly, adding or removing fan curve adjustment points or spin-up or spin-down times isn't possible, but the more important temperature source is here, which is especially useful to have in Windows, where you can actually stress-test your hardware and adjust these settings accordingly.