MSI MEG Z490 ACE
 | £177.52 Buy!  MSI MEG Z490 ACE Motherboard Intel Z490 LGA 1200 DDR4 ATX MotherboardeBay.co.ukDelivery: in United Kingdom Report |
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One of the flagship overclocker motherboards with an Intel LGA 1200 processor socket based on the top Intel Z490 chipset. Refers to 2020 MSI Enthusiast Gaming line models. Supports 10th Gen Intel Core i9/i7/i5/i3, Pentium Gold, and Celeron processors with Comet Lake (14nm) microarchitecture. Designed for use as part of high-performance gaming and overclocking premium configurations, including multiGPU systems based on 2-Way Nvidia SLI and 3-Way AMD CrossFire technologies.
First of all, it is designed for enthusiasts who can get the maximum performance boost by fine-tuning the operation parameters of key system components manually. The MSI MEG Z490 ACE motherboard is equipped with a heavy-duty 17-phase power subsystem with heatsinks and a heat pipe for flawlessly stable operation of overclocked configurations. With a POST indicator, Power, Reset, Flash BIOS and Clear CMOS buttons, this model is perfectly suited for outdoor bench work and performant benchmarking sessions. Allows connection of up to three high-speed NVMe SSD drives, for which aluminium heatsinks are provided. Ultra-fast processing of network traffic is provided by two LAN adapters (2.5GbE Realtek 8125B and GbE Intel I219V) and a high-speed Wi-Fi 6 module (802.11n/ac/ax).
Trump ace
MSI MEG Z490 ACE is a top motherboard even by A class standards. Both the price tag and its name (Ace in English means Ace) directly say that the board, which knows no boundaries, is friends with any powerful processor of the Comet Lake family and loves water cooling. Another question is that the price for it is almost twice as high as for the conditional Asus ROG STRIX Z490-H. Though it's also a great overclocking board capable of small feats.
No overclocking limit
The new product from MSI is equipped with a powerful 17-phase power subsystem (16 + 1 circuit), a bunch of connectors for connecting drives and a bunch of functions like a reset button and a debug display that increase the convenience of working in an open test bench. We don’t know if the name is related to the shark of the same name from the movie with Jason Statham, but it seems that the board was created with the expectation of extreme overclocking with water cooling. This is hinted at by a lot of connectors for connecting coolers and a CBO pump, the ability to directly control all this goodness from the BIOS, as well as the use of 90 A Mosfets, which increase the theoretical total load of the board to 1440 A. The VRM cooling itself is well thought out, the cooler does its job perfectly and rarely includes an additional 30mm fan for the VRM.
Top audio, Wi-Fi 6, and USB 3.2 Gen2x2
In all other respects, MSI squeezes the maximum out of the capabilities of the Z490 chipset: 4 slots for DDR4 with a maximum frequency of 4800 MHz, 3 M.2 slots with heatsinks, 3 reinforced PCI-E x16 slots, 6 SATA ports for building a disk system of any complexity and many possible USB -ports for connecting anything and a top-end Realtek ALC1220 audio path with a SABRE9018Q2C DAC. For those unimpressed by this list, MSI has a couple of trump cards on the table. However as soon as Intel figure out what's what and add official support to its platform. The second trump card: Class 3.2 Gen2x2 USB port with a theoretical throughput of 20 Gbps. It is clear that now there is nothing special to connect to them, but do not forget that this is a game for the future. This list is completed by the built-in Wi-Fi module of the sixth generation Intel AX201, which is paired with a Bluetooth receiver. Considering the price, we didn't expect anything else.
