MSI MEG Z490 Ace Motherboard Review

1. Introducing MSI MEG Z490 Ace2. Digging in to the hardware3. Testing and Performance4. PCI Express, Power Draw and VRM Temperatures5. Closing Thoughts6. View All Pages

CrystalDiskMark 7

Testing the bandwidth of the M.2 slots reminds us that Intel Z490 and 10th Gen continues to use PCI Express Gen 3 while AMD X570 has moved on to Gen 4.

Power Draw

Look at the low end of the chart and you can see the Asus running on Auto while adhering to Intel's guidelines. This has a huge impact on power draw as you can see when you check the MSI on Auto which definitely breaks those guidelines. The overclocked figures for Asus and MSI yield few surprises however the ITX Gigabyte on Auto looks very power-hungry. We shall carry out a full review of the Gigabyte in the near future.

The VRMs in these motherboards are substantial pieces of engineering and you can see the consequence in these charts. By any sensible metric all three boards run relatively cool however the Asus is clearly performing much better than the MSI which starts off warm on Auto and then climbs when we overclocked. By contrast the Asus looks really good and we can hardly wait to get stuck into a full review.

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