It’s obvious from the moment you first open the box of the MSI X470 Gaming Pro that keeping costs down was a priority and that is good if you are looking for a X470 chipset motherboard on a budget. It’s not a bad looker either. The black and red aesthetics, I/O cover and integrated LEDs round this motherboard off nicely. At the end of the day, MSI has delivered an X470 motherboard that performs just as well as the rest, for a remarkably low price. Despite such a rock-bottom price tag, most of the basic features you’ll find elsewhere are all present and accounted for.The ATX layout has allowed MSI to fit three full-length PCIe x16 lanes, though only one of these has steel reinforcement, whereas you will find some of the competitors have the top two reinforced to stop GPU sag if you’re running SLI or CrossFire. Squeezed between these are three more PCIe x1 lanes, but like most boards, you’ll lose physical access to those nearest the full-length lanes if you fit a dual-slot card.It may not be designed for tweakers, yet MSI has included the optional 4-pin CPU power connector alongside the traditional 8-pin CPU, which should deliver even more stable power for AMD’s multi­cored behemoths. You do not have to connect power to the 4-pin but you may want to for higher-end AMD CPU overclocking. (i.e. X-Series) Twin M.2 slots are included, though neither comes with a heat shield. As with the other boards, only the top can fit the longest M.2 size of 22110.Six SATA 3 ports is par for the course on the X470 at this price point, while the four memory slots are rated to handle memory speeds up to 3,466MHz thanks to the ‘DDR4 Boost’ design.One area where the price differential is noticeable is the onboard audio, which uses Realtek’s ageing ALC892 codec. This is rated to have an SNR of 95dB, which is substantially lower than the 120dB of the newer ALC1220 codec used on other boards. As a result, if you are looking for higher quality audio I would suggest popping in a decent soundcard to make up the difference.I will say connector positioning on this motherboard was well thought out allowing for fantasic cable management if you have a case that allows you to take advantage of it. I located a NZXT 500i on sale over the holidays and it is as if these two pieces of hardware were made for each other. Using MSI's Mystic Light software along side NZXT's CAM software for lighting put the finishing touches on my build.While there have been a few areas cut to keep the cost down, performance hasn’t suffered. My biggest "issue", personally, is the use of the ALC892 audio codec, which is noticeably inferior in practice to the ALC1220 codec. Of course, this is subjective and probably not an issue unless you are an audiophile and have your room kitted out with 5.1 or 7.1 surround.All in all, it is a quality motherboard at an affordable price and I would recommend. The only down-tick for me on the rating was on the audio for my particular setup. As stated previously, that is a subjective down-tick for me personally and you should consider this a 5 star board if you don't have concern over the use of the ALC892 codec.