VERDICT
A monster motherboard that ticks nearly every box, but sadly
money doesn’t grow on trees.OVERALLSCORE
84 %
PERFORMANCE
34 / 35
FEATURES
34 / 35
VALUE
16 / 30GODLIKE
+ Excellent
overclocking
+ Excellent VRMs
and on-board
cooling
+ Plenty of featuresMOUSELIKE- PCB a little
cramped in places - Huge price
- Won’t make you
a cup of tea
BENCHMARKRESULTS
The massive RGB lighting-equipped M.2 heatsink and
I/O shroud look fantastic, although this paraphernalia
also makes one or two of the fan headers tricky to access.
You’re sorted for lighting though. Even if you need more
illumination, there are numerous 3-pin and 4-pin RGB
LED connectors, plus a 3-pin connector for Corsair’s RGB
controllers and components.Performance
At stock speed, the MEG Z490 Godlike posted the highest
image editing score of any Z490 board we’ve tested at
64,528, as well as the highest video encoding score, which
was nearly 20,000 points higher than the next best result.
It slipped a little in our multi-tasking test, but overall it was
the clear winner at stock speed. This wasn’t repeated in
Cinebench, though, with the best results here going to
other boards.
Meanwhile, Far Cry New Dawn saw a minimum 99th
percentile frame rate of 97fps, which is average, with
this figure increasing to 103fps once overclocked. Audio
performance was superb, though, with a dynamic range of
112.6dBA and noise level of -111.7 dBA. When overclocking,
we managed to hit 5.1GHz, by simply inputting a 1.3V vcore
and 51x multiplier, which was far more straightforward than
the Asus boards we reviewed this month.Conclusion
The MSI MEG Z490 Godlike has lashings of the latest
technology, and more than enough power and cooling to
handle Intel’s latest CPUs. There’s huge scope for using it at
the heart of a monster 10-core overclocked water-cooled
system, and that extends to areas such as NVMe storage
and extreme overclocking too. If money were no object,
we’d already have ordered one, but the reality is that only a
few people will be able to disregard that extreme price tag.
If you have the money, then go for it, but cheaper options
overclock just as well and only lack some of its features.
ANTONY LEATHERStockspeed99thpercentile Stockspeedavg
Overclocked99thpercentile Overclockedavg1,920x 1,080,UltrasettingsFARCRYNEWDAWN0 50 100 150AsusMaximusXIIHero 100fps 130fps
100fps 130fpsMSIMEGZ490Godlike 98fps 129fps
105fps 133fpsGIMPIMAGEEDITING0 20,000 40,000 60,000 80,000AsusMaximusXIIHeroStockspeed OverclockedStockspeed Overclocked066W 103W66W 96WTOTALSYSTEMPOWERCONSUMPTION
Idle
63,695 68,247MSIMEGZ490Godlike 64,528 69,579HANDBRAKEH.264VIDEOENCODING0 200,000 400,000 600,000 800,000AsusMaximusXIIHero 736,997 776,022MSIMEGZ490Godlike 754,626756,102HEAVYMULTITASKING0100,000 200,000 300,000 400,000AsusMaximusXIIHero 296,831 298,653MSIMEGZ490Godlike 290,509 301,414GIMPIMAGEEDITING0100,000 200,000 300,000 400,000AsusMaximusXIIHero 322,363 333,549MSI MEG Z490 GodlikeAsusMaximusXIIHeroMSIMEGZ490Godlike0 100 200 300 400100 200 300 400306W 377W310W 371WLoadAsus Maximus XII HeroMSI MEG Z490 GodlikeAsusMaximusXIIHeroMSIMEGZ490Godlike325,767 329,387Stockspeed OverclockedCINEBENCHR20MULTITHREADED0 2,000 4,000 6,000 8,0006,369 6,5806,329 6,541Asus Maximus XII HeroMSI MEG Z490 GodlikeCINEBENCH R20 SINGLETHREADED0 200 400 600 800528539523528