MSI MPG Z790 Carbon WiFi Review

1. Introducing the MSI MPG Z790 Carbon WiFi2. Testing and Performance: CPU3. Testing and Performance: Technical4. Games: Part 15. Games: Part 26. Closing Thoughts7. View All Pages

The MSI MPG Z790 Carbon WiFi is a frustrating motherboard as it looks good on paper and also when it is sat on the test bench.The list of features is extensive and the hardware is almost beyond reproach, although we would like to see a Micro button for power.

It is just a theory but we feel the hardware is part of the problem as the 20-phase Renesas RAA229131 VRM controller and 19+1+1 x105A Renesas RAA 22010540 VRMs have the ability to deliver as much power as you choose to a Core i9-13900K CPU.

The snag is that it appears someone at MSI thought ‘Okey dokey let's do that' and then cranked the Vcore to an horrific 1.39V and shoved 300W into the CPU which means it throttles as soon as you run a CPU intensive task. As we show in our video, when you back off the power to Intel's rated 253W the CPU is perfectly happy and the temperature drops by 15 degrees C.

We have had a number of conversations with MSI during the course of this review and we are told updates are planned to improve the situation. To our surprise the latest BIOS v1.50, which was released after our video went live actually makes no difference to CPU performance, but we continue to live in hope.

You can buy the MSI MPG Z790 Carbon WiFi for £470 from Overclockers UK HERE.

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Pros:

• High end hardware with rock solid VRMs
• Tool-free primary SSD installation
• Wi-Fi 6E is included
• Seven fan headers at the top and bottom of the board

Cons:

• The BIOS needs work as it delivers excessive power to your CPU
• Micro buttons do not include one for Power
• Price tag is fairly high

KitGuru says: MSI MPG Z790 Carbon WiFi shows strong potential, as indicated by our manual tuning, but the default BIOS settings need work.

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