MSI MEG X570 Motherboard Overview
The MSI MEG X570 Ace is an ATX motherboard which has a black PCB with black and gunmetal accents. This is definitely one of the best looking X570 boards that we’ve seen so far.
Getting right to it this is an X570 board so we have AMD’s AM4 socket. MSI X570 motherboards will support both 2nd and 3rd generation AMD Ryzen processors. Surrounding the CPU socket are the power delivery components. This board features a 12+2+1 all digital power design featuring the Infineon IR35021 digital PWM controller and titanium chokes.
The power delivery components are covered by two aggressive heatsinks, which are connected by a heatpipe. This heatpipe continues down the board to connect to the chipset heatsink. At the top corner of the board you’ll find two 8-pin EPS connectors. Only one is required for operation, but the 2nd is great for overclocking and providing more power to your CPU.
Moving over to the memory slots there are four DDR4 DIMM slots that support memory up to 4600 MHz on Ryzen 3000 series processors. These memory slots are metal reinforced, which is always great to see. Above the memory slots you’ll find your CPU fan and optional CPU fan headers. Moving over to the edge of the board there are four 4-pin fan headers and your 24-pin ATX power connection.
Moving down the board there is a USB 3.2 gen 1 header, four SATA 6GB/s ports, a post code display, and your front panel headers. Definitely an interesting location for the post code display. Typically we see it up higher on the board or down at the bottom. With two graphics cards installed it is going to be very hard to read.
At the bottom of the board you’ll find the rest of your headers and connections. From left to right you have your HD audio header, 3-pin addressable RGB header, two 4-pin fan headers, two USB 2.0 headers, a USB 3.2 gen 1 header, a USB 3.2 gen 2 header, power button, reset button, the OC Genie dial, and another 3-pin addressable RGB header. The OC Genie dial allows you to overclock without having to go into the BIOS or use AMD’s Ryzen Master software. The dial starts at 0 and goes all the way up to 11. There are different overclocking presets for each processor.
The entire bottom of the board is characterized by a large heatsink array. It is actually four separate pieces, not one single piece like we saw on the ASRock X570 Taichi. There are three M.2 heatsinks and of course your chipset heatsink with integrated fan. As I’ve mentioned almost all X570 motherboard will ship with a heatsink fan as the X570 chipset uses 3 times as much power as the X470 chipset. When it comes to the three PCI-Express 4.0 slots the top is an M.2 22110, while the bottom two are M.2 2280.
As far as expansion slots on the board you have three PCI-Express x16 slots all of which have MSI’s Steel Armor installed, and two x1 slots. If you have a single card installed in the top slot it will always run at x16 speeds, but if you install two cards they both will run at x8 speeds. The top slot is spaced to accommodate up to 3-slot cards.
When it comes to audio MSI is using their Audio Boost 4 HD solution, which makes use of the Realtek ALC1220 audio processor and a dedicated headphone amplifier. MSI also includes their Nahimic 3 audio software, which provides virtual 7.1 surround sound.
Moving up to the rear I/O it has a large cover on it, which has a mirror on it. This is actually an infinity mirror, something that we’ve seen on cases and AiO’s, but never on a motherboard. We’ll get into lighting on the next page. The rear I/O also has an integrated shield, which I think is becoming standard these days. When it comes to buttons and connections on the rear I/O from left to right you have clear CMOS and BIOS flash buttons, WiFi antenna connectors, a combination PS/2 port, two USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.2 gen 1 ports, four USB 3.2 gen 2 ports (3x Type-A, 1x Type-C), 1 GbE Ethernet, 2.5 GbE Ethernet, and your audio connections. WiFi is provided by Intel’s WiFi 6 which is 802.11ax, plus Bluetooth 5.0. The 2.5 GbE port is powered by the Realtek RTL8125 controller.
