MSI MPG B560I GAMING EDGE WIFI Motherboard Review

Ben Enos / 3 years ago

A Closer Look

ITX boards are definitely small, but manufacturers like MSI still do a brilliant job at packing in as many features as possible. MSI has added plenty of heatsinks to their B560I GAMING EDGE WIFI board to help dissipate heat as best possible. One thing I really like to see on ITX boards is the inclusion of two M.2 slots. MSI has added M.2 slots on the front and back of this board to make the most of the space available while making sure users have what they need.

The B560I GAMING EDGE WIFI comes with a single 8-pin EPS power connector. This will be more than enough to offer stable power even to a 11900K. While you won’t be able to massively overclock your CPU on this board, you will still be able to have a mild overclock to make sure you are getting the most from your system. Hopefully, most people won’t really be looking to overclock their ITX based systems so it shouldn’t be an issue either way.

Just about as top and centre as you can get on this board, we have a 12v RGB header and next to that are three fan headers. As you will see, they are right on the edge of the board to make sure every millimetre of space is used on the B560I GAMING EDGE WIFI.

MSI has gone with a 6+2+1 Power Phase design which will help ensure a stable and reliable power delivery across your system. They have also added 7W/mK thermal pads to their heatsinks to help better transfer the heat generated from the components to the heatsinks.

As I have said multiple times now, it takes a bit of work to fit everything in on an ITX board. So, in short, some things kind of just get stuck where there is room for them and not always where we would like to see them. For instance, in the image below, we have our front panel header in the middle of our front audio header and a USB header. In my opinion, this is not an ideal place for a front panel header as it will be harder to access once a GPU is installed. Though, in saying that, if you install these connectors before your GPU, you may actually be able to help hide them between the motherboard and GPU, allowing for a bit better cable management and an overall cleaner-looking build.

MSI has gone with a bigger M.2 heatsink on their B560I EDGE GAMING WIFI than we have seen on previous ITX models. We also don’t see a fan on this model as we have seen on previous models such as the B550I.

We have four SATA ports on this board and these two are umm, well, they are there, and that is about all I can say. While it is great to have an additional two SATA ports, it will be hard to hide the cables, especially once the GPU is installed. The cables will likely have to be routed over the RAM or GPU once everything is plugged in, leaving them out in the open! This may bug some but is worth remembering a lot of ITX cases aren’t really meant to be shown off, they just get built in a tucked away somewhere out of the way. So, depending on what time of case you are using, this may or may not be a problem for you.

Down the right-hand side of the board are the 24-pin power connecter, two SATA 6GB/s ports, a USB 3.2 Gen2 port and a USB 3.2 Gen1 port.

One of the main things we always see on ITX boards is the lack of USB ports. now, this is completely understandable as they are much smaller so we have to make some cutbacks somewhere. However, MSI has still managed to include five standard-sized USB ports and a single Type-C port. We also have our standard host of inputs as well: