From a first look, you’ll be able to see that both of these motherboards are rather similar, but there are some noticeable changes. Z690 motherboards were the first to have access to PCI-E 5.0, so we’re seeing this become more widely adopted on a range of boards including the MPG Z790 Carbon WiFi. The amount of USB ports has significantly improved as well with the Z790 maxing out at 10 high speed ports. The other main change is the more frequent usage of high speed USB ports. The amount of rear IO you have is often based on price, but we’ve again seen the inclusion of more ports on less expensive boards which is a nice touch. Many new boards may also feature a Thunderbolt 4 header for your PC case, or USB4 ports on the rear giving you access to fast charging and better transfer speeds. Overall, the Z790 chipset has not changed that much from its predecessor, but there are definitely some improved features that justify choosing it over Z690 for a new build. On that front, MSI has also implemented a total of seven fan headers into the board. Five of these are for system fans and are intelligently positioned around the motherboard for clean wiring. There’s also a CPU and PUMP header for your air cooler’s fan of pump head if you’re water cooling.

Premium Thermal Solution: Enlarged heatsink with heat-pipe, MOSFET thermal pads rated for 7W/mk, additional choke thermal pads and M.2 Shield Frozr are built for high performance system and non-stop gaming experience For gaming audio, music, and movies, the board uses an ALC4080 audio processor capable of 32-bit/384kHz. It’s not quite as high quality as the ESS DACs we’ve seen on other boards, but it delivers high quality audio that’s free from interference. MSI has gone the extra mile to source audio specific capacitors and to build in special shielding to keep the audio signal clean, which is great to see. AUDIO BOOST 5: Reward your ears with studio grade sound quality for the most immersive gaming experience

The main change is the inclusion of PCI-E 5.0 for graphics cards and SSDs. Most of the new Z790 boards have Gen 5 compatible slots which do a great job of opening upgrade paths for next-gen graphics card and SSD releases. We’ve also seen PCI-E 5.0 slots feature on a fair few on the cheaper boards which is a big selling point if you’re looking to upgrade in the future. The top M.2 slot is Gen4 and the heatsink is easily removed with a clip on the edge. Below that is the Gen5 M.2 slot, followed by three more Gen4 M.2 slots under a U-shaped heatsink — these are provided by the chipset while the other two M.2 slots are provided by the CPU.

If you saw the first part of our review in progress for the Intel Core i9-13900K, then you’ve already had a sneak peak at gaming performance with this motherboard. Since I also had a Z690 Carbon WiFi on hand, as well as a 12900K, I decided to test it against the last generation board and to throw in the results using that board with a 12th gen CPU. Intel doesn’t expect there to be performance uplift in games and applications between Z690 and Z790, but I thought it would be interesting to show what the generational uplift is between the two models and CPUs. SATA Cables If you’ve got any older storage drives that use the SATA data interface, you can install them with the included SATA cables. Compatible CPUs band support may depend on every country’s regulations and Wi-Fi 7 will be ready in Windows 11 SV3. The system also features a whopping five M.2 slots for NVMe SSDs. Four slots run at PCIe 4.0 x4 speeds while the second larger slot is rated for PCIe 5.0. There are also six SATA slots, but be aware that the final M.2 slot shares lanes with these, so you’ll want to position your SATA SSDs and HDDs according to the manual. AUDIO BOOST 5: Manjakan kuping Anda dengan kualitas suara studio grade untuk pengalaman gaming yang paling imersif.For this review, I found that my 13900K sample already struggled to maintain its thermal limits so was unable to push it further without extending beyond the realms of comfort. But, should you opt for a custom water cooling solution or hit the silicon lottery, these options are plentiful and readily available within the system BIOS.