ANY COLOR so long as it’s black. So it
goes for MSI’s mid-range MEG boards
and the new MSI MEG Z 690 Unify is no
exception. While the look is familiar, the
specifications have had a major overhaul
to support Intel’s new Alder Lake CPUs,
not to mention no fewer than five M.2
sockets, dual 2. 5 GbE LAN, Wi-Fi 6E, plus
DDR5 and PCIe 5.0. It’s quite a package.
If that’s true of the feature set, it also
applies to the board’s physical bearing.
The heatsinks have a lot of mass, as
the structure reaches out over the IO
area. The sheer scale of the cooling
and the surface area connected via a
heatpipe bode well for keeping the high-
end MOSFETs running well within their
specified range.
Speaking of cooling, for the CPU there
are only mounting holes for the new
LGA1 700 socket, not the legacy LGA1 200
item. The holes are similar, but the
overall ‘Z’ height is slightly lower on the
newer platform. In other words, make
sure to check on mounting pressure,
even if you have an LGA1 700 mounting kit
for your cooler.
To the right of the socket are four
DRAM slots capable of supporting up to
128 GB of DDR5 RAM. MSI lists support
up to DDR5 6666MHz using one DIMM per
channel. With all slots populated, that
drops to 40 00MHz. Next up, there’s a two-
character debug LED for troubleshooting
boot issues in the upper-right corner,
plus a four-light EZ Debug LED for Boot,
VGA, DRAM, and CPU, further helping to
identify trouble spots.
Seriously stealthy and stuffed with M. 2 support
MSI MEG Z 690 Unify
8VERDICT MSI MEG Z 690 UnifyMEGA BOARD Sleek aesthetic;
lots of M.2 support; great
overclocking support
MEGA BORED No RGB lighting; possibly
a little power hungry
$489, http://www.msi.comSPECIFICATIONS
Socket LGA1700
Chipset Z690
Form Factor ATX
Voltage
Regulator20 Phase (19+1 105A
MOSFETs for Vcore)
USB Ports 1x USB-C 3.2, 7x USB 3.2
Gen 2, 2x USB 2.0
LAN 2x 2.5 GbE
Audio 5.1, optical SPDIF
PCIe Dual x16 5.0 (x16, x8/x8),
one x4 3.0
Memory 4x DDR5 6666+(OC),
128GB Capacity
M.2
3x PCIe 4.0 x4 (up to
80mm), 1x PCIe 4.0 x 4 +
SATA, 1x PCIe 3.0 x4
SATA 6x 6bps (Supports
RAID0/1/5/10)
Fan/Pump
Headers
8x 4-Pin
Diagnostics
Two-character debug
LED, four-LED Post Status
Checker
Wi-Fi / Bluetooth Intel AX 201 Wi-Fi 6E,
BT 5.2
Warranty 3 YearsThe Unify sports a 2 0-phase VRM,
with 19 phases dedicated to Vcore and
an incredible 1 ,995A available to the
processor. That’s enough to support
the power-hungry Intel Core i9-1 29 00K
at stock speeds and overclocked. The
bottom half of the board is almost entirely
covered by heatsinks and shrouds.
There’s a dedicated headphone amplifier
(ESS-made) that handles headphones up
to 6 00ohm, plus the usual EMI and noise
mitigation measures too. As for PCIe, the
top two slots source their bandwidth from
the CPU, and the top slot runs up to PCIe
5.0 x16, with the second slot supporting
up to x 8 speeds. If the bottom slot is
populated, the top drops to PCIe 5.0 x8.
Wedged above, below, and between
the PCIe slots are a total of five M.2
sockets. Three support PCIe 4. 0 x4, while
the other one is limited to PCIe 3 .0 x4.
You also get V-Check Points Lite voltage
read points to read the voltage through
a multimeter and not software. On the
rear IO area, there are no fewer than 10
USB ports, including seven USB 3 .2 Gen2
ports, two USB 2. 0 ports, and a USB 3. 2
Gen2x2 Type-C ( 20 Gbps) port. Arguably,
that’s a bit light on the USB-C connectivity
and Thunderbolt doesn’t appear at all.
The BIOS menu is just like the Z 590
Unify with easy access to overclocking
options, though, with Alder Lake’s hybrid
config, the actual process has changed
significantly. Of course, it’s early days
for the Z 690 platform and Alder Lake
CPUs generally, so drawing performance
conclusions isn’t easy.Certainly, there were no obvious weak
spots, though the Unify appears to be a
power-hungry board, which isn’t ideal
given that high-end Alder Lake CPUs
are heavy drinkers themselves. That
said, VRM temperatures topped out just
above 54 °C during stock and overclocked
testing, so there’s nothing holding you
back from an overclocking perspective.
All told, this is a solid board both
metaphorically and physically. Oodles of
M.2 storage capacity sweeten the deal
and the only obvious omission is a total
lack of integrated RGB illumination,
though there are integrated headers on
the board and MSI Mystic Light support
if you want to add your own. – JOE SHIELDSBENCHMARKS
MSI MEG Z69 0 Unify
Cinebench R23 multi-thread (Pts) 27,393
Cinebench R23 single-thread (Pts) 1,990
AIDA 64 memory bandwith (GB/s) 79
3DMark Firestrike Extreme (Pts) 17,121
Peak system power (W) 340
Idle system power (W) 71
Overclocking P Cores (GHz) 5.1
Overclocking E Cores (GHz) 4.1
Test setup: Intel Core i9-12900K, DDR5 5200, Asus TUF RTX 3070, Windows 11 6 4-bit