MSI MEG Z690 GODLIKE Motherboard Review

Storage Performance

To test the storage performance in our motherboard reviews we use CrystalDiskMark and run the sequential read and write tests on default settings (1MiB block size, Queue depth of 8 and 1 thread) to test the maximum throughput of the connector/port. For M.2 tests, we run the benchmark test on a Seagate FireCuda 530 2TB Gen 4 NVME drive. For USB tests, we use the same drive, inside an ASUS ROG Strix Arion NVME enclosure, and for SATA tests, we use a TEAMGroup Delta RGB 250GB SSD. The test is run in various slots/ports and the drives are always formatted before use.

The M.2 slots all have pretty much the same results, with a slight edge going towards the first slot, this is because it is connected to the CPU directly and not the chipset. Slot 6 is so low because it is a PCIe Gen 3.0 slot as opposed to the Gen 4.0 slots that the others are, one of the others is a Gen 5.0 slot but since we can’t test a type of drive that doesn’t exist we used a 4.0 drive in all slots.

SATA speeds are significantly slower than M.2 as you would expect, with read speeds being over 50MB/s faster.

Bizarrely, USB Type-C has a slower read speed than it does write speed while USB Type-A has a big lead on its read speeds over the write speeds, but USB Type-C sees overall better performance than Type-A does.