MSI TRX40 Creator Review

Conclusion

Now then, this is a bit of a turn up for the books.

MSI have often put their eggs in the flash and flair basket. That isn’t to say that their performance or build quality has been lacking, by no means, but merely that it’s quite difficult to have a Dragon as your brand mascot and not end up with a motherboard that reflects such a visually powerful creature.

With the TRX40 Creator they have taken a bit of a step back from the easel and instead focussed their efforts almost wholly upon the things that matter to the enthusiast. If we can borrow a popular metaphor, if the MSI MEG Godlike is as much sizzle as it is steak, the Creator is Wagyu Beef with a sprig of parsley. It’s not quite as singular of purpose as some more utilitarian designs we’ve seen, but on the aesthetics/power-user sliding scale it definitely leans heavily towards the ‘getting the job done with the minimum of fuss’ end of that particular graph. If you’ve ever looked at the modern crop of motherboards and bemoaned the fact it’s incredibly difficult to get one which doesn’t dominate your case internals with a light display reminiscent of a Pink Floyd concert, then you’ll absolutely love the understated looks of the Creator. We certainly do.

Going all in with a performance design can be a gamble as there is always the possiblity that the performance isn’t all that, and then you end up with a cardboard bag in a Gucci world. The MSI Creator has no such issues, regularly finding itself at the top of our graphs. Certainly more regularly than you might imagine if you just looked at the price tag, which finds it the most affordable of our three launch motherboards. It overclocks easily, eagerly, and has the performance to back up your efforts. Some times when you’re overclocking you end up with a nice solid overclock in CPU-Z terms but that potential doesn’t get reflected in the benchmarks. The Creator fully rewards every moment you’ve been fine tuning your system, in keeping with its philosophy.

Special note has to be made of how much attention to detail MSI have placed on getting everything just so. It’s a Swiss Watch, a Saville Row suit, the Audi R8 in a Lamborghini Huracan world. It’s the motherboard that architects would buy. It’s clean, simple, devastatingly effective. Everything is easy to assemble, exactly where you’d expect it to be, and works without a single hiccup. Performance is easy to obtain and delivered with a beautiful consistency.

Unquestionably MSI deserve a special doffing of our cap for walking an alternate path to the majority of motherboards with their clean Creator design aesthetic and focus upon letting the motherboard take the strain of your system, freeing you to focus upon your workflow. It’s perfect if you want a sledgehammer of performance, but also if you want a motherboard that doesn’t turn into Blackpool Lights every time you hit the power button, and all at a relatively attractive price point.

  

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