LABS TEST / Z490 MOTHERBOARDS
T
heMEGAceseriesofmotherboards
hasshownitselftooffersome
seriouslypremiumfeaturesaswell
asexcellentoverclockingperformance,but
withthisZ490boardretailingforjustshortof
£400,weexpectallthisandmore.Theboard
certainlylooksthepartandis equallyhefty
comparedwithotherboardsontest,donning
notjustlargeVRM,PCHandM.2heatsinks,but
backplatestoo,twoofwhichhelptocoolthe
rearoftheVRMarea.
WhiletheI/Oshroudisn’ta massive
single-pieceheatsinkasontheMAGZ490
Tomahawk,herethetwoheatsinksarelinked
usinga heatpipeandtheleftportionis actively
cooledusinga smallfanembeddedintheI/O
shroudtoo,ratherthanhavingtomountit on
topliketheAsusboardsontestthismonth.
It’sa moreelegantsolutionbutthisnever
spanupduringourtesting,evenwiththeboard
overclocked,whichis maybejustaswellgiven
wecouldn’tseemtobeabletoalteritsspeed
intheEFIorMSI’sDragonCentersoftware.
MSI MEG Z490
ACE/£390inc VAT
SUPPLIER box.co.ukThe VRMs hit 55°C under load,
which is miles away from any
thermal throttling situation, and
the 16+1 phase power delivery
seemed to do a good job at stock
speed and when overclocked too.
There are three M.2 ports,
although these share bandwidth
with the six SATA 6Gbps ports, so
some of those will be disabled if
you use all three M.2 ports. The
peak M.2 temperature using the
lower, larger heatsink was 49°C,
which was 9°C cooler than with
the heatsink removed. The M.2
SSDs are much easier to access
than on the Maximus XII Hero too. You get the
full complement of overclocking and testing
tools including power, reset and clear-CMOS
buttons, but we were disappointed at the
lack of an error display, which can be useful
for troubleshooting.
The rear I/O panel has seven Type-A USB
ports with five of these USB 3 or above, plus
a 20Gbps USB 3.1 Type-C port. There’s also
802.11ax Wi-Fi, gold-plated audio connectors
for the on-board ALC1220 sound, USB BIOS
Flashback and a 2.5 Gigabit LAN port, which is
included on all MSI’s Z490 boards.
The on-board lighting set the MEG Z490 Ace
apart from the crowd with a bright, vivid A symbol
on the I/O shroud and more details on the PCH
heatsink, plus you get four RGB headers on the
PCB including a 3-pin port to control Corsair RGB
water-cooling components.
The latest BIOS saw a much lower single-
threaded score in Cinebench than the Asus
boards, but this will likely receive a fix soon.
Elsewhere there was very little betweenthem with just 3,000 points separating all the
boards in the system score.
The MEG Z490 Ace had the best-
performing audio on test with a dynamic range
of 114.6dBA and the second lowest load power
draw too. It was the easiest to overclock as
well, requiring 1.3V to hit our CPU’s 5.1GHz
across all ten cores. This saw the system score
rise from 319,985 to 331,496, but it was slower
in the Cinebench single-threaded score.Conclusion
The MSI MEG Z490 Ace is an excellent Z490
motherboard and second only to the Gigabyte
Z490 Aorus Master in terms of features and
value. MSI needs to sort out its software,
which was a little buggy at launch, but if you
need a premium Z490 board it otherwise
comes highly recommended.VERDICT
Reassuringly expensive and better able
to handle Intel’s 10-core monster than its
cheaper sibling.PERFORMANCE
33 / 35FEATURES
32 / 35
VALUE
22 / 30OVERALLSCORE
87 %
SPEC
Chipset Intel Z490
CPU socket Intel LGA1200
Memory support 4 slots: max 128GB
DDR4 (up to 4800MHz)
Expansion slots Three 16x PCI-E 3, two 1x PCI-E 3
Sound 8-channel Realtek ALC1220
Networking 1 x Intel Gigabit LAN, 1 x
Realtek 2.5 Gigabit LAN, 802.11ax Wi-Fi
Overclocking Base clock 100-
200MHz, CPU multiplier 8-123x; max
voltages: CPU 1.7V, RAM 2V
Ports 6 x SATA 6Gbps 3 x M.2 PCI-E 3,
3 x USB 3.1 Type-A, 2 x USB 3.1 Type-C,
2 x USB 3, 3 x surround audio out
Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244ACE
+ Excellent overclocking
+ Effective cooling and
power circuitry
+ Plenty of featuresJOKER- No thermal
probe header - Pricier than the
competition - No display output
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