MSI Z490 Motherboard Preview

MSI MPG Z490 Gaming Carbon WIFI

First up we have the long-named MSI MPG Z490 Gaming Carbon WiFi, I think MPG is also in the name. The box features an RGB race car speeding away, as well as badges for Z490, 10-th Gen and Optane support.

The long name and the strange box to one side, because the motherboard its self looks exceptional! Curvy, angular, abstract, and more in big doses here from those huge heatsinks and shrouds. Plus, it’s plastered with a mixture of gun-metal grey and carbon fiber that’s sure to look great in any PC build.

A good VRM setup is always a good start, and you get two enormous heatsinks with a joining heatpipe to keep everything in good order.

There’s an 8+4 CPU power configuration too, which should help deal with the more extreme end of the new 10th Gen CPU series.

There’s even more carbon fiber down here too, albeit I think the M.2 shields are a little slim looking and joining them to the chipset heatsink would give it more flow. It still looks cool though, don’t you think?

There are three full-size PCIe lanes here and a single 1x. Plus, the two main ones are armoured, so they’ll better support the weight of your GPUs.

Aside from the M.2 mounts, you’ll also find 6 x SATA ports on the side of the board.

Around the back, you’ll find a PS2 connector, haven’t seen one of those for a while. There are also more modern things like USB Type-C. Much like the other Z490 boards we’ve been looking at today, it also has 2.5 GbE LAN and 802.11ax WiFi.