MSI MAG B560 Tomahawk WiFi Preview

Introduction

It’s fair to say that the launch of the 11th Generation Rocket Lake CPUs has been a very mixed bag. On the one hand we have the incredible Core i5-11600K, a six core processor that has enough power to handle the majority of tasks you’ll do on a daily basis whilst also being a great gaming platform. The Core i5-11400F was a blinding gaming processor even if it was a little behind the curve on rendering and encoding tasks, whilst the flagship Core i9-11900K was a big disappointment, particularly in light of the excellent Core i9-10900K it replaced. We haven’t tested the Core i7 models in the Rocket Lake range yet, but we’ve heard nothing but positive things too.

All of which means that if you’re in the market for an Intel platform that will give you the benefits of PCI Express 4.0 but don’t want to go for the Core i9 and its toasty performance then the Core i7 or Core i5 is the way to go. Whilst you’re saving money it would be behoove you to take a closer look at the B560 chipset which has all the benefits of the Z590 platform but at a more affordable price point. We’ve got a few to bring you in time but today we’re looking at one which, price wise, sits at the upper echelon of the B560 selection, the MSI MAG B560 Tomahawk WiFi. It has everything you want from the new Intel chipset and more than enough high end component selection to power a Core i7 or Core i5 11th Gen CPU. Let’s take a look.

Technical Specifications

Despite being the chipset below the Z590 in the Intel range, the B560 – at least here in MSI MAG Tomahawk guise – doesn’t appear to want for anything. We have the PCI Express 4.0 slot for your graphics card as well as one for your NVMe that are the hallmarks of the newest Rocket Lake hardware and a big part of why you might move to this platform. We’ve still got the 2.5G LAN and all the USB ports you could realistically need. It’s a very fully featured motherboard considering its price tag.