MSI Z390 MEG Ace Preview
Up Close
The X399 Creation went for a black box with rainbow light effects behind it whilst the Z390 Ace goes all gold on both the background lighting and MSI logo.
It makes perfect sense now RGB lighting is such a major fixture of our lives to go all in on a dark motherboard scheme and let the lighting do the talking.. erm shining. The colour bit. Anyway, the MSI MEG Ace goes for the black PCB with dark grey accents. We really like the design of the power phase heat sinks, clean and crisp. Every socket has steel reinforcement too so you can be sure the Z390 MEG Ace will last as long as the smile on your face.
Built into the IO Shield/Heat sink combo is an RGB display powered by the MSI Mystic Light technology. We know you’ve just seen it above, and we’re about to go into more detail, but for those of you who like an overview of a motherboard the two pictures below give you a good indication of the two halves of the MEG. The top side is committed to giving your CPU all the power and cooling it needs to break records, whilst the bottom half is all about speedy storage and graphical intensity.
Obviously we don’t yet know how much power the new 9th Generation of Intel Core CPUs will require but it’s telling that both the MSI MEG Ace and ASUS Maximus XI Extreme use an 8+8 CPU power arrangement. Clearly if you want to maximise your overclocks you’ll require the kind of power usually reserved for the X299 Intel offerings.
As the old Pirelli adverts stated, power is nothing without control. When it comes to processors that control comes from the cool power phases and even cooler CPU. The heat sinks on the MEG are big and beefy so should be able to keep your VRMs under control, whilst there are plenty of fan and pump headers to ensure that you can keep your new purchase frosty. There are some RGB LED Strip headers at the top edge, whilst the right hand side contains plenty of warning lights so that you can keep a close eye on any overclocking issues as they arise. Lastly on this page the DIMM sockets support up to DDR4-4500. Pretty freaking sweet if you ask us. Let’s look at the rest in more detail whilst we all await the full performance review.
