I bought this board as it ticked all of the boxes for me, there was only one other that did that but I chose to go the MSI route.
Firstly the construction of this board is superb, I've installed a few boards in my time but the quality of this one leaves other boards in the dust. I also have another Z390 board, not MSI and the difference is obvious from the moment you open the box.
It has more LEDs and funky displays than a Christmas tree but those are only a sideshow, it's the rest of the features that put the Z390 Godlike in a league of its own.
First thing to note is that you will need a graphics card with this board, even if your processor has graphics capabilities built in the board has no display port, HDMI or other graphics connections. It's intended for extreme gamers and as such would always use a separate graphics card. Note I am not an extreme gamer but from time to time I do. My main use of this board is for development where there is a lot of compiling and/or video processing which. when combined with the 9900K the throughput is pretty impressive.
I run m.2 nvme drives in two of the three m.2 slots - this board comes with heatsinks for all three of the m.2s and they work, compared to another Z390 I have, the temperature is down by at least 12c.
Overclocking - should you wish to do so is simply a case of dialling in how much you want on the game boos knob, there is a knob on the board where you can just set it from 0 - 11, mine is set at a conservative '2' at the moment, one day I may try 11!
The supplied software is reasonable, I had problems with the DVD not reading properly, but all of the software is available on the MSI website and after a windows 10 install I just went and downloaded what I needed from there.
Would I recommend this board... yes. Is it worth the money, that's up to you but for me the answer again is yes.
| Wireless Type | 802.11n, 802.11b, 802.11a, 802.11g, 802.11ac |
|---|---|
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 4 |
