MSI MEG Z490 ACE Motherboard Review

Peter Donnell / 5 years ago

We know that MSI love to create some of the best-looking motherboards out there, and we suspect the MSI MEG Z490 ACE is one of them! As one of their high-end enthusiast motherboards, it’s crammed full of features to ensure great overclocking performance from the latest Intel CPUs. However, aesthetics are just as big a part of the enthusiast PC building market these days as anything else, so they’ve given it a funky gun-metal, black and gold design laced with RGB to make it really stand out from the crowd.

MSI MEG Z490 ACE Motherboard

Aesthetics are certainly a strong point with this motherboard, offering up plenty of RGB lighting and effects, but it’s certainly function before form here. Enormous heatsinks, a massive INTELSIL Digital PWM setup with 16+1 phases and a 90A power stage, built-in WiFi 6 and 2.5G LAN. Plus you get extensive support for M.2, all complimented with M.2 Shield Frozr. ESS DAC & Nahimic for audio, and much more. It seems then, there’s really much this motherboard doesn’t have!

Features

Supports 10th Gen Intel^® Core™ / Pentium^® Celeron^® processors for LGA 1200 socket
Supports DDR4 Memory, up to 4800(OC) MHz
Ready 4 the Future: Support Lightning Gen 4 Solution for the future
Mystic Light: 16.8 million colors / 29 effects controlled in one click. Mystic Light Extension supports RGB, RAINBOW and CORSIAR LED strip.
Extreme Power Design: INTERSIL digital PWM, 16+1 phases with 90A Smart Power Stage, dual CPU power connectors and exclusive Mirrored Power Arrangement to unleash the true power of your processors.
Outstanding Cooling Solution: Frozr Heatsink, VRM Heat-pipe, MOSFET Baseplate and M.2 Shield Frozr ensure the extreme performance with low temp.
Latest Network Solution: Onboard 2.5G LAN plus Gigabit LAN and latest Wi-Fi 6 solution deliver the best online experience without lag.
Smart Button: One button with multiple hardware control. Reset Computer, Safe Boot, Turbo Fan and EZ LED control functions with just one click.
Triple Turbo M.2 with Shield Frozr: Turbo M.2 delivers PCI-E Gen3 x4 performance with transfer speeds up to 32 Gb/s for the latest SSDs.
Audio Boost HD: Isolated audio with a high quality audio processor with ESS DAC & Nahimic for the most immersive gaming experience.

What MSI Had to Say

“The MEG series seeks to transcend current gaming products, the flagship model designed to push the limits of what an extreme gaming series can be. Combining the strengths of our existing arsenal with new innovative technology; this results in significant improvements in operational and gaming efficiency. With the MEG series, take complete control of performance and personalization with the ultimate gaming series for enthusiasts who want it all.” – MSI