MSI MPG Z490 Gaming Carbon WiFi Motherboard Review

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Storage Configuration & Testing

For our testing, the operating system is always installed to a Samsung 970 EVO NVMe based SSD. A second, identical drive is employed for testing RAID0 performance on motherboards that support this functionality natively, without PCIe adapter kits. In cases where this is necessary, an alternative is used as the OS drive. It is either an Intel SSD 750 via U.2 to PCIe adapter or a SATA based Samsung 840 Pro.

Standard SATA III 6Gb/s drive tests were performed using Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX hard drives on all SATA headers. The SATA drives were used for testing in RAID 0 64k block size configurations on all applicable controllers when possible. While not necessarily ideal, AMD controllers can’t use smaller block sizes. For an apples to apples comparison, it is necessary to choose a common block size shared by both vendor’s controllers. Additionally, third party controllers from Marvell and Realtek should support this block size as well if necessary. All drive benchmarks were done using the freely available CrystalDiskMark program, run with both 50MB and 100MB sized test sets. NVMe drives use an additional 1000MB test set.

USB 2.0 Testing

To test the capabilities of the onboard USB 2.0 connections, we used a Sans Digital external eSATA / USB 2.0 drive enclosure, connected via the USB 2.0 port. Installed in the enclosure are dual Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX drives in a RAID0 configuration. In theory, this should always saturate the USB 2.0 connection an isolate the motherboard as the biggest variable in our USB 2.0 performance tests.

USB 3.x Testing

A Thermaltake BlacX 5G docking port which uses a USB 3.x connection with a SATA based Corsair Force GT SSD installed. While not the most modern drive, it is fast enough to test the USB connection.

Motherboard Storage Configuration

The storage configuration from Z490 isn’t really any different than it was for Z390. Most of the changes are with network support, not storage. The MSI MPG Z490 Gaming Carbon WiFi has support for 6x SATA ports and two M.2 drives. Naturally, it supports Intel’s Optane technology as well. The SATA controller supports RAID levels 0, 1, 5, and 10. The M.2 slots support both SATA and PCIe/NVMe type devices. It also supports RAID 0 and 1 for NVMe devices.

We did have some issues with the storage testing on the MSI MPG Z490 Gaming Carbon WiFi. For whatever reason, using any version of CrystalDiskMark specifically would show results that were in the 11.5MB/s range for any type of drive. As it turns out, you can’t use targeted tests such as the sequential read test. You have to run “all tests” in order for it to work properly. It took a while to figure this out. I do not know if this is specific to Z490 motherboards or the MSI MPG Z490 Gaming Carbon WiFi specifically or a software bug in CrystalDiskMark.

Dan Dobrowolski
Dan has been writing motherboard reviews for the past 15 years, with the first decade or so writing for [H}ard|OCP. Dan brings his depth of knowledge about motherboards and their components to his reviews here at The FPS Review to help you select the best one for your needs.

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