MSI Meg Z390 Ace
MSI aced the looks.
MSI is also changing its branding by simplifying its gaming motherboard naming scheme. The high end is now known as the MEG series (MSI Enthusiast Gaming), then there’s MAG (MSI Arsenal Gaming) and finally MPG (MSI Performance Gaming). We have the MEG Z390 Ace on hand. There’s no doubt this is a high end board and it really does look terrific.
At this price, you’d expect some serious hardware. The PWM is a quality 12+1 phase system cooled by chunky metal PWM heatsinks linked by heatpipes. There’s also dual eight pin power connectors so there’s no doubt the board is built to take some overclocking punishment. One of the first things to catch your eye is the dial at the bottom right of the board. This is an automatic overclocking dial that can actually go to 11! We tested a couple of the lower speed modes which worked well, but the higher speed modes are very cooling and CPU dependent. If you’re pushing to 5GHz and beyond, it’s still better to do it manually, though a quick one touch OC is a nice little addition.
One of the lovely looking little things is the infinity display adjacent to the I/O shield. You can set RGB colours and effects that have a 3D depth effect.
MSI has equipped the Z390 Ace with Killer Network’s E2500 Gigabit LAN controller, the lone board of the test not to be using Intel. Killer NICs sometimes come in for some criticism, but this is largely unfounded these days thanks to a lightweight .inf install and automatic Windows detection. MSI also use the latest Intel 1.73Gbps Wi-Fi controller. As we noted with the Aorus Master, it would be nice to see boards at this price start to adopt 2.5Gbps+ LAN.
The I/O area features an integrated shield and has all the ports we expect. There’s a strong complement of USB ports, with six USB 3.1 ports including a Type-A and four USB 2.0 ports. The rest is as expected, with CMOS clear and BIOS flashback buttons complementing the antenna ports, LAN and audio including S/PDIF. The MSI is the only board in the test to completely omit display outputs, so you will not be able to use the CPU’s integrated graphics.
The MSI UEFI BIOS implementation remains excellent. It’s easy to navigate and logically laid out, both for the novice user and those looking to deep dive into more esoteric settings. We had no problems setting our RAM to DDR4-3866 and running the CPU at 5.1GHz, all within about 60 seconds.
The MSI performed as expected. We noted it was strong at CPU and memory related tasks.
MSI has produced a gorgeous motherboard that oozes appeal. It’s a very user friendly board, and is a solid choice for the heart of your system.
“One of the first things to catch your eye is the dial at the bottom right of the board. This is an automatic overclocking dial that can actually go to 11! ”