MSI MAG Z390 Tomahawk

“The Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Pro’s video-editing and multitasking scores of 267 and 305 are the best here”

SCORE PRICE £120 (£144 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk

The MSI costs £144, which is £4 more than the Asus – but it’s still substantially cheaper than the Gigabyte. Happily, it doesn’t look like a budget board. Military imagery and fonts are used throughout, with metal heatsinks decorated to resemble weapon crates. The military motif even extends to the rear I/O cover.

The feature set is fine, if unspectacular. There’s the usual 64GB of DDR4 support and two M.2 slots, and you get a third M.2 connector for wireless cards. While the MSI has three PCIe x16 slots, only the first one runs at its full bandwidth. The next two slots run at 4x and 1x speeds, so they’re useful for expansion cards rather than graphics cards. Note the lack of Nvidia SLI support, too.

Impressively, the MSI has seven fan connectors, while there are four onboard USB connectors and an extra four-plug CPU power connector. The similarly cheap Asus wasn’t as versatile, with no extra CPU power plug and fewer fan headers. At the rear, you get three USB 3.1 ports that use the faster Gen 2 specification alongside two USB 2 ports and a single USB-C 3.1 connector. The Asus has more USB 3.1 ports, but no USB-C.

The MSI was also quicker than the Asus in most tests. Its videoencoding and multitasking results of 241 and 291 both beat the Asus, and it again outpaced its rival in Cinebench and the Geekbench multicore test. (Just note that the MSI couldn’t compete with its more expensive competitors.) This board only fell behind the Asus in single-threaded tests. The MSI’s image-editing score of 170 was three points slower, and it was also poorer in Geekbench’s equivalent benchmark.

The MSI’s high point came during gaming. Its 3D Mark Fire Strike result of 17,656 outpaced the ASRock and was close to the Gigabyte, and it returned a solid 146fps in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and a class-leading 102fps in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

Up against the cheaper Asus, the MSI does well in key areas: it’s quicker in tougher application tests and games, and wasn’t far behind in single-threaded tests. Plus, for the most part, the Tomahawk has superior features, making it a better choice for affordable gaming rigs.

KEY SPECS 4 x 4,400MHz DDR4, max 128GB 3 x PCIe x16, 2 x PCIe x1 3 x USB 3.1, USB-C 3.1, 2 x USB 2, PS/2, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, DisplayPort, optical S/PDIF, 5 x audio 2 x M.2, 6 x SATA 3 3yr RTB warranty