MSI MAG Z690 Carbon WiFi Review

Up Close – The Grand Tour

At the top left corner we have the standard 8+8 pin 12V CPU power inputs, although this photo does give us a chance to show off the precise nature of the VRM heatsink and give you a glimpse of the heat pipe that ties it all together.

  

Moving around we have some fan and pump headers as well as the 7segment POST display and the all important RGB/ARGB headers for the Mystic Light infrastructure.

  

Front panel USB ports are available in both the regular Type-A and modern Type-C style. The Type-C connector is so much more robust at both ends we wonder why it wasn’t the original solution. Who needs to be putting their cable in the third way up, rather than just a omnidirectional oval connector?

  

Just because M.2 is the future and by far the fastest storage solution available to regular users, doesn’t mean that SATA has gone the way of the Dodo. Many of us have a plethora of SATA drives still kicking around and with six ports available the Carbon has you covered.

  

Most cases have front intake fans these days and the Carbon helps you keep all your cables tidy by having plenty of system fan headers at the bottom edge of the board. In between are the two USB 2.0 ports which are commonly used to control your AIOs and lighting.

  

The bottom left corner is more Mystic Light stuff as well as giving us a good look at the dual length M.2 heatspreader that sits between the lower PCIe 5.0 slot and the PCI Express 3.0 slot that sits at the bottom of the PCB.

  

We know you’re keen to see the motherboards stripped of their heatspreaders, and this shows off that every M.2 slot on the MSI Z690 Carbon is a full length one. No shorties here.

  

Lastly at the back we have display outputs in both HDMI and DisplayPort formats, along with plenty of high speed USB Type-A sockets and even a 20G superspeed Type-C one. The LAN is 2.5G and there is WiFi 6E should you be allergic to network cables.