MSI MEG X570 ACE Review

Introduction and Technical Specifications

| Source: MSI Price: Author: Tom Logan

Introduction

Please note this review was written prior to the AGESA 7C35v15 BIOS update. Our graphs have been updated to reflect the new results, but the text remains the same as the fast single threaded stock performance affects so few of our results and none of our overall opinion.

The recent introduction of the MxG models to the MSI range has met with huge success. Whether it's the MPG or the MEG we have seen lots of high end MSI motherboards performing incredibly solidly.

Whilst the models like the Godlike are far beyond that which most people might wish to spend on a motherboard, the MEG range hits the sweet spot of high end performance at a relatively reasonable price, and with the launch of the X570 chipset a new addition has been made to the MSI range in the form of the MSI MEG X570 ACE.

If you've been following along with our X570 motherboard reviews then you'll know that many motherboards come with names that would struggle to fit on a widescreen forum signature - MSI's own MPG Gaming Carbon Pro WiFi springs to mind - so it's nice with the MEG ACE to have one that's a lot more succinct. Perhaps, like the box as we'll see shortly, the minimalist approach speaks of MSIs confidence in the product. Most high end things survive on name recognition alone, and with the plaudits the MEG/MPG range have received it wouldn't surprise us if the newest addition to the MSI suite of motherboards continues this trend.

Of course that's what we're here to discover, so let's have a reminder of what it brings to the table before we find out how it fares in our benchmark suite.

Technical Specifications

With all the X570 chipsets the main attraction, besides support for the latest generation of Ryzen CPUs, is the implementation of the newest PCI Express 4.0 technology. This greatly increases the available bandwidth for your graphics card and M.2 drives. "What of it?" you might say. Well modern graphics cards at the very top end are able to chew through every single bit of bandwidth you can provide to bring the best visual fidelity. But they require the storage drive to chuck them huge, often 4K or above, textures for them to process as fast as possible. The fastest drives are M.2, but they take up PCI Express lanes. PCI Express lanes which are also being utilised by your GPU. Eventually one or the other will have to sit around and twiddle its thumbs. Enter PCI Express 4.0, which doubles the potential bandwidth from 32Gb/s to 64Gb/s. That's progress in the gaming industry you might think, but the current limit of M.2 drives is around 3.2 GB/s of data. Soon they'll be 6.4 GB/s, give or take a little for the overheads. If you deal with high definition files on a regular basis the ability of this to speed up your workflow is insane. So, as we say, the big attraction for this latest X570 chipset is unquestionably the inclusion of PCI Express 4.0. That isn't all it has to offer though, which means it's time to look at the MSI X570 MEG ACE in more detail.

A lot of the X570 motherboards we've looked at so far have tied the two power heatsinks together to help spread out the heat generated from the new powerful Ryzen 3rd Gen processors across the widest area. With the MEG ACE MSI have taken another step by tying the two MOSFET heatsinks to the chipset heatsink too thanks to a long heat pipe that runs down the side of the DDR4 memory slots. It's certainly a unique solution. We can't recall any motherboard adopting the same solution. The proof will be in the pudding as the old adage goes.

1 - Introduction and Technical Specifications 2 - Up Close 3 - Up Close - Around the Board 4 - Test Setup and Overclocking 5 - Storage 6 - AIDA64 7 - SiSoft Sandra 8 - Blender 9 - Cinebench R15 10 - Cinebench R20 11 - x265 Benchmark 12 - HEVC 13 - Sony Vegas 14 - Geekbench 15 - Realbench 16 - PCMARK 10 17 - Passmark 9 18 - 3D Mark 19 - Time Spy Extreme 20 - Gaming 21 - CPU Temperatures 22 - Conclusion «Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Next»

Most Recent Comments