MSI MEG Z690 Unify Review

Up Close – Tour Part Two

There are two USB Type-A front panel connectors should you own a case with plenty of frontal options, whilst the six SATA ports will let you continue to use your old drives. It’s faster than trying to transfer everything slowly to just plug your drive in and copy it across.

  

The bottom right corner is as busy as you would expect from a premium motherboard. Front panel connectors, BIOS switches, onboard power control buttons and USB 2.0 headers are all present and correct.

  

Rounding off the bottom edge of the Unify there are water flow monitoring points, yet more system fan headers and the last two RGB LED Strip headers – in both RGB and ARGB – for the Mystic Light ecosystem.

  

The Unify IO section has USB 3.2G2 10G Type-A ports everywhere you look, as well as a 20G 2×2 Type-C one, two 2.5G LAN ports, CMOS controls and, for reasons we don’t fully understand, a combined PS/2 port. PS/2 ports have recently made a reappearance having disappeared for years. Has someone found a cache of IBM Model M keyboards?

  

If you’re anything like us then your primary excitement over the introduction of PCI Express 5.0 is not what it will do for your graphics card but the amount of speed you can obtain from your M.2 drives. You can never have storage that goes too quickly, and with five different M.2 slots beneath that cover the MSI MEG Unify promises to give you plenty of options.

  

Viewing it from this angle you can see what we meant in our first comments about how deeply black the heatsinks on the Unify are. We know it is only a matter of time before a manufacturer includes Vanta Black on their motherboard, or perhaps someone coats the inside of their case with it, but the moment you get off angle the heatsink on the Unify nearly disappears.

  

We still can’t get over the concept of 19 105A Power stages on the MSI MEG Z690 Unify. Maybe those Alder Lake CPUs are thirsty, or maybe this is the belt and braces approach to power delivery. We know already, and if you want to know too then read on, friends.