MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi Review

MSI has delivered the MPG X870E Carbon WiFi and it is packed with features, starting with the headline USB4 ports and blazing fast WiFi 7. In addition we have an 18+2+1 x 110A VRM which could likely power a small city. To add to our delight the price comes in just over £400 where previous high end models could touch £700. As you will see in our video we ran the X870E Carbon WiFi with DDR5-8000 memory and that gave us plenty to talk about.

Timestamps

00:00 Start
01:00 A little update
02:05 Digging into the board
02:54 Power delivery / VRM’s / Features
05:54 Component Installation
07:56 BIOS, Power and Temps
09:30 USB4 testing
10:55 Performance info, setup
12:20 Cinebench R23 Multicore
14:07 AIDA64 Memory Bandwidth
14:52 Far Cry 6
15:40 Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
16:11 Assassin Creed Mirage
16:54 Cyberpunk 2077
17:14 Closing Thoughts

Key features

• Premium Thermal Design: Heavy plated MOSFET heatsink with heat pipe and high quality thermal pads.
• EZ PCIe release: A simple press of a button to lock or unlock the PCIe graphics card.
• EZ M.2 Shield Frozr II: The new tool-less design makes installing or removing your M.2 SSDs much easier.
• Quadruple M.2 connectors: Onboard quadruple M.2 connectors for the maximum storage performance.
• Lightning USB 40G: Featuring a built-in USB4 port, it offers a lightning-fast 40Gbps transmission speed.
• Dual LAN: Dual premium network solution for both intranet and internet.
• Wi-Fi 7: The latest wireless solution with a new 320MHz channel achieving a maximum transmission speed of 5.8Gbps, which is 2.4 times faster than Wi-Fi6/6E.

Specification:

• Chipset: AMD X870E
• CPU Support: AMD Ryzen 9000/8000/7000 desktop processors.
• VRMs: 18+2+1 x 110A Smart Power Stages
• Memory support: 4 DIMMs, Dual Channel DDR5, Maximum Memory Capacity 256GB
• Expansion slots:
  • 1x PCIe Gen 5.0 x16 slot (from CPU)
  • 1x PCIe Gen 5.0 x4 slot (from CPU)
  • 1x PCIe Gen 4.0 x16 slot (from chipset)
• Storage:
  • 2x M.2 Gen 5.0 x4
  • 2x M.2 Gen 4.0 x4
  • 4x SATA 6Gbps
• USB support:
  • 2x USB 40Gbps Type-C (Rear)
  • 1x USB 20Gbps Type-C (Front)
  • 2x USB 10Gbps Type-C (Rear)
  • 9x USB 10Gbps Type-A (Rear)
  • 4x USB 5Gbps Type-A (Front)
  • 4x USB 2.0 (Front)
• Ethernet: Realtek 8126 5Gbps and Realtek 8125 2.5Gbps LAN
• Wireless: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
• Audio: Realtek ALC4080 7.1-Channel Audio
• Form Factor: ATX 244mm x 305mm

While the MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi is a new motherboard, the AMD X870E chipset at the heart of the hardware is basically a rebadged X670E. We cover this point in a separate piece of news HERE which addresses a number of points about the latest updates from AMD.

The TLDR is that X870E is same as X670E with the addition of USB4.

The biggest piece of news around AMD at the moment is an update to their AGESA code to version 1202 which fixes a few bugs and also makes it possible to run DDR5-8000 memory on Zen 5 CPUs.

You do not require an X870E motherboard to run DDR5-8000 as we found an updated X670E did a perfectly decent job however you do require a Zen 5 CPU.

We explain these points in our video about the MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi, however we were working hard to make this a review without it sprawling into a workshop about AMD CPUs.

Performance and Testing

Test system

• Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 9700X
• Motherboard: MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi BIOS 1.A13 AGESA 1202
• Memory: 32GB G.Skill Trident Z5 Royal Neo DDR5-8000
• CPU Cooler: Phanteks Glacier One 360D30
• Graphics card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4080 Gaming OC 16GB GDDR6X
• Power supply: Seasonic Focus GX-1000 ATX 3
• SSD: 1TB Crucial T700 M.2 NVMe
• OS: Windows 11 23H2

In our video we show a number of performance charts and we talk about them in some detail and it becomes clear the motherboard BIOS/ AAMD AGESA and the settings within Windows 11 23H2 make far more difference to the performance of your AMD Zen 4 or Zen 5 CPU than the motherboard. This is something of a moving target as Microsoft has just announced that Windows 11 24H2 is finally rolling out so the most helpful advice we can offer is to watch our video and keep reading our news.

Our distilled take on the performance of this motherboard is that the BIOS works very well, performance was rock solid and the huge VRM operated in the temperature range of 50C to 60C.

Closing Thoughts

We rate the MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi very highly and the irony is that the single most novel part – the pair of USB4 ports – is rather underwhelming.

Every other part of the motherboard is superb, although we would have preferred to see some separation between the three Micro Buttons on the rear I/O panel to avoid Fat Finger Catastrophe. We are happy to see that MSI has canned the expensive MEG Ace from their range of AMD motherboards and have effectively replaced it with this MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi .

The single biggest issue with the MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi is the price which comes in north of £400. That is perfectly decent value for money, however it is a significantly outlay given the current climate.

You also have to consider the rule of thumb about buying a motherboard that costs more than the CPU. If you are shopping for a £600 Ryzen 9 9950X then fair enough, but if you are spending £350 on a Ryzen 7 it looks a bit pricy. On the other hand, if you are throwing £1000 or £1500 in the direction of Nvidia, you can easily argue the price of the motherboard doesn't make much difference.

You can buy the MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi for £429.99 inc VAT HERE.

Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.

Pros:

• Superb array of ports and connectors.
• MSI’s new BIOS layout is very good.
• Tool-free installation of M.2 SSDs and add-in devices.

Cons:

• Relatively expensive.
• USB4 offers minimal immediate advantage over 20Gbps USB-C.

KitGuru says: MSI has set a high standard with the MPG X870E Carbon WiFi.

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