More glitz than the Vegas Strips.
PRICE $929
http://www.msi.comW
e’ve spoken a lot about
manufacturers turning away from
gaming motifs, jazzy lights, and pointy
angles in favor of sleeker designs, a
more premium feel, and a better quality
of product. It’s something we’ve been
requesting for ages. You can say that RGB
sells; we feel good design sells better.
MSI’s MEG Z390 Godlike didn’t seem to
catch that memo. The layer of over-the-
top glam adorning this bulky E-ATX beast
was enough to make even our experienced
selves take a step back, aghast. From the
LED-dotted infinity mirror on the rear
I/O cover to the vertically aligned OLED
display, showcasing the MSI dragon
beating the crap out of some ninjas on
startup, to the huge drake motif on the
bottom chipset perpetually glowing with
rainbow lighting, everything about this
screams gauche. There’s no subtlety at
all. That touch of class we find from the
likes of Asus is absent. You could argue, of
course, that there’s a hole in the market
- after all, we don’t want every mobo to
look like an Asus motherboard – but it’s as
though MSI saw the latest Formula, and
said, “We want that, but x10.”
Which leads us to the slight niggle that
is performance. Or lack thereof. We get it:
Auto-overclocking processors, especially
ones as toasty as Intel’s Core i7-8700K,
isn’t a good thing, but it’s hard to deny
MOTHERBOARDhere’s no subtlety at
all. That touch of class we
find from the likes of Asus
is absent.
VERDICT:Every now and then
even the best brands seem to make
an insane product choice, and this is
MSI’s shot at the crown.^6- OK performance
- Good audio
- Crazy price; under-performer
•Garishdesign
•Ill-implemented OLED display
•Pooroverclocking.
- Crazy price; under-performer
the appeal of that extra performance.
Compare this to the Hero, and you lose out
by 100 points in Cinebench, nearly 4fps in
X264, 10 seconds in Fry Render, and 2ns
in memory latency at stock. Power draw
is much lower here, with a 26W saving
compared to the Hero. It’s something.
This is meant to be MSI’s best and
brightest componentry baked into a
fine backbone of a mobo, but we’re just
not seeing it. Take the power delivery:
We’re talking twin eight-pin EPS, sitting
alongside an 18-phase VRM design
(which is actually a 16-phase design in
reality). Sounds great on paper, but how
does it translate to overclocking? Well,
our minimum 5.0GHz stability benchmark
test achieved a mundane 1.29V versus the
Hero’s 1.22, and the maximum overclock
we managed was 0.1GHz lower than
anything we’d achieved prior. Perhaps it’s
down to Asus supporting a stronger BIOS
than MSI, but there really isn’t a lot here to
warrant much in the way of compliments.
There must be some positives, surely?
Well, connectivity is extensively supported.
There are three M.2 slots, with dedicated
heatsinks, two internal USB 3.1 headers,
two USB 3.0 headers, six SATA 6Gb/s,
one U.2 connection port (for the 0.001
percent of the market with a device
capable of plugging into it), and two USB
2.0 headers. You also get nine PWMfan headers, one AIO pump header, and a
waterflow header. The one saving grace is
the fat audio solution.
Ultimately, MSI’s MEG Z390 Godlike
mobo tries too hard to be something
it’s not. The gaming motifs are tired, the
LEDs are unnecessary, performance is
acceptable at best, and the price is simply
absurd. Even the dedicated audio isn’t
enough to convince us of its value. That’s
a shame, because MSI could be so much
more than it is today – if only the company
would take a step back, and try to establish
exactly what its market should be.
ZAK STOREYTECH REVIEW W