MSI Z590 MEG Ace Review

Pricing and Conclusion

If you’ve been following along with all our Z590 reviews – and if you have we thank you because it took a massive effort to bring them all together – then you’ll be aware that they are all about bringing compatibility with the 11th Gen CPUs and PCI Express 4.0 to the Intel Platform. There are other tweaks here and there but unquestionably the primary headline feature is that support for the fastest drives and highest bandwidth GPUs that comes with PCI Express 4.0.

The MSI MEG Ace is their equivalent to the ASUS Maximus XIII Hero, or the Gigabyte Aorus Master. It’s the perfect blend of high end feature set and connection options, whilst still being priced at a very reasonable level. It’s the second most expensive motherboard of the six we’re bringing you today, but when you look at the quality of the components and the amount of connection options, it isn’t overpriced at all.

Available to purchase here: https://geni.us/MSI_Z590_Ace

  

Performance between the six Z590s is close enough that you won’t be disappointed in any of them, but if there is an edge to be found, or a level of consistency throughout our testing, then the MSI MEG Ace is up there with the Strix ITX as one of the best two. What this means for most of us who want a full size ATX motherboard is that the MEG Ace is probably the one to go for if you want the best combination between feature set and performance consistency. It isn’t only in raw speed that the MEG Ace holds a trump card though. If you look at the connectivity options there is plenty to keep you satisfied. It supports DDR4 speeds of up to 5600MHz if you have the memory kit capable of overclocking that hard. There are two Thunderbolt 4 ports giving you up to 40G transfer speeds, and if you want more then htere are also 2 USB 3.2 Gen2 ports and 4 3.2 Gen1 ports around the back with more available at the front. Add that to two Mini DisplayPorts, 4 M.2 NMVe slots and the Intel I225V 2.5G LAN and WiFi 6E AX210 and there is nothing missing from the Ace.

We’re big fans of the aethetics too. It’s fairly subtle following the popular all-black route, with a few MEG logos in gold just to add some accents. As you have seen from our temperature graph the Adaptive Boost Technology on our Core i9-11900K leads to some searingly hot temperatures, so the many fan headers on the MEG Ace will come on useful when it comes to getting as much airflow in your case as possible. The power stage is very high quality and, as you saw on the previous page, barely getting warm even when we tortured it as much as we could.

All in all the MSI Z590 MEG Ace combines the very best of the Z590 platform in terms of performance and connectivity, and does so without costing as much as you might expect for such a fully featured motherboard. There has been a climb in motherboard pricing recently, so to get all this for a penny under £440 is very attractive and wins the MSI Z590 MEG Ace our OC3D Performance Award.

  

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