MSI Z890 MEG ACE Motherboard Review

A Closer Look

The MSI MEG Z890 ACE is a high-end solution, so it’s hardly surprising to see it has such a premium aesthetic, with massive heatsinks and plenty of armour covering the motherboard. It does look amazing, but as you might expect, it’s not just about aesthetics, as all that armour is going to help ensure the best performance from the hardware within, as well as anything connected to it, such as your CPU, graphics card, storage and more.

The VRM heatsinks are huge, and they also feature a heavily finned design that provides a significantly increased surface area for optimal cooling performance. The VRM also features a 9W/kw MOSFET Thermal Pad, as well a massive heatpipe that bridges the two heatsinks. So it’s no surprise that it also has one of the most significant VRM configurations of any of these new boards, with an incredible 24+2+1+1 Phases design with 110A SPS, which will undoubtedly be enough to push some record-breaking performance from the flagship i9 CPUs and most certainly any models further down the range.

The lower section is packed with features too, with quick release on the top PCIe 5.0 slot, and EZ release on the M.2 heatsinks thanks to a simple slide locking mechanism. What’s obvious is that these heatsinks are massive, so keeping any of the flagship M.2 SSDs nice and cool will not be difficult. But really, being able to remove them, fit drives and put them back, without the use of tools is really appealing too.

There is an impressive 5 x M.2 mounts on this motherboard, with the top supporting PCIe 5.0 x4, and all the additional ones supporting PCIe 4.0 x4, so you should be able to get some pretty extreme storage configurations here and utilise RAID. There’s armour on all the PCIe slots, and there’s even an additional 8-pin header to provide voltage stability to all this I/O, which will also assist with I/O overclocking and fine tuning too.

Around the back, you’ll find a huge backplate providing additional protection to the motherboard, but it also comes with some thermal pads to ensure the motherboard is provided with additional cooling to vital components.

This is easily one of the best-looking rear I/O panels I’ve seen on these new motherboards, with six USB 10G ports at the top, and five more at the bottom, giving you lots of options for your peripherals and storage. However, there’s also a twinned pair of THUNDERBOLT4 and two more 10Gbps Type-C ports to deal with the latest and greatest storage and connectivity devices, as well as displays and offering PowerDelivery too. There’s a 10GbE LAN and the latest WIFI7 too, so ultra-fast internet and networking are going to be a breeze. But I love those three control buttons in the middle, allowing for BIOS flashing, CMOS, and a programmable button that can be used for everything from RGB to overclocking.