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

MSI has made a series of correct decisions with the MEG Z490 Ace, though it is not quite perfect. The motherboard has every feature you could reasonably expect to see at this price point as £400 will buy you a significant number of headers and connectors, a good selection of micro buttons on the I/O panel and at the foot of the board along with a POST code debug display. More importantly the VRMs pack 16 stages each rated at 90A which is awesome.

The thing is, if you run the MEG Z490 Ace on Auto and simply enjoy the sterling performance of your 10th Gen CPU then it seems to us you don't need a number of those features. If MSI was to pull back on the list of extras they could surely supply the MEG Z490 Ace for £349 or maybe even £299. Instead you get a motherboard that is fairly pricy and which is clearly aimed at the lazy performance freak.

The way that MSI has chosen to ignore Intel's recommendations on power limits is an object lesson that more power equals more performance equals more heat. Make no mistake, we were mightily impressed by the way that Core i9-10900K would run at 4.9GHz on all ten cores but we were slightly surprised to see it would run at that speed forever, under maximum load.

If you choose to dig into the BIOS, reset the power limits and generally calm things down you will take the edge off the MSI MEG Z490 Ace but you may well end up with a better gaming PC. Save 100W here, turn down some fans there, perhaps drop a couple of frames per second and everything comes into equilibrium. One area for improvement is that MSI's hardware does not interface fully with HWiNFO64 and as a VRM monitoring is not possible within the software. This means enthusiast overclockers and undervolters are forced to use the Dragon Centre to monitor critical functions which we are not so keen on.

For us this means the MSI MEG Z490 Ace falls between two stools. If you simply want huge performance and minimum hassle you have no need for a good number of the features on the board. On the other hand if you want to control the hardware and power manually you need to understand what the BIOS is doing and then need to make adjustments as you see fit. Judging by the BIOS updates we have seen over the past few weeks we would advise you to approach any future BIOS updates with a fair degree of caution.

You can buy the MSI MEG Z490 Ace from Overclockers UK  £399.95 HERE.

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Pros:

• VRMs are highly specified and can handle any CPU.
• Impressive performance with a 5.2GHz overclock.
• Good list of features and a fully stacked I/O panel.
• Stylish looks and solid construction.

Cons:

• VRM coolers are unimpressive and the add-on fan looks like a cheap fix.
• The BIOS ignores Intel's power guidelines but does not make this apparent to the customer.
• We should be able to monitor VRM temperatures and Vcore with HWiNFO64 and not be forced to use Dragon Centre.

KitGuru says: The MEG Z490 Ace hardware looks good and performs well but we'd like to see a couple of improvements.

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