UEFI BIOS Screenshots
The MSI MAG B760 TOMAHAWK WIFI utilizes an American Megatrends Inc. licensed UEFI BIOS. Unfortunately, MSI gives no real specs on the BIOs beyond that. However, the MSI MAG B760 Tomahawk WiFi utilizes MSI’s Click BIOS 5 implementation. Click BIOS 5 has been around for a few years now and it’s broadly similar to its predecessors going all the way back to the Click BIOS 2. You’d have to go back to the original Click BIOS to find something that’s aesthetically and functionally different on MSI motherboards.
MSI’s Click BIOS 5 is a different approach to the same things that the other motherboard makers are doing. The interface at its core is broadly similar to the BIOS of old when you get down to it. It has the same features for hardware monitoring, fan tuning, overclocking, memory tuning, overclocking, and so on that every other board maker offers. In some respects, MSI does things better and worse than its competition.
There are two things that differentiate a UEFI in the market. 1.) The interface and 2.) the tools included in the UEFI itself. On the subject of the interface, I find a certain dichotomy with MSI’s implementation. On one hand, it’s intuitive enough to do what you need it to do and is aesthetically pleasing. The settings offered are deep enough that you’ll never find yourself unable to achieve a specific overclock for lack of having access to certain settings.
That being said, I find the interface somewhat annoying at times. The actual workspace in the BIOS for settings is only about a third of the total screen real estate which baffles me. This is due to the giant header at the top that’s supposed to provide some reference information such as time, date, and some clock speed and configuration data. It tends to use this space inefficiently and devotes way too much screen real estate to things like the system’s boot device ordering.
There are huge navigation tiles to select various settings categories and while they are easy to find, this type of design went out with Windows 8. MSI does falter slightly by using more submenus than they need to. Often, you’ll find you have to traverse two or three menus without much of anything in them to find an option buried deep in another menu that doesn’t have many options. They could all have been consolidated easily. Other times MSI tends to not use enough submenus or present a really long menu to the user and expect them to sort through it all.
In other words, the user interface is a bit of a mixed bag but it does work well enough to get the job done.
On a final positive note, while it doesn’t have any unique tools, the MSI MAG B760 TOMAHAWK WIFI offers overclocking profiles, an SPD reader, solid fan tuning and temperature monitoring options, and lastly, a good BIOS flashing utility. It’s Memory-Z feature allows you to look at the SPD tables in BIOS which is handy. MSI’s M-Flash is pretty simple and reliable though it requires a reboot before you can access it for some reason. You will not find a secure SSD erasure tool or anything like that.
At the end of the day, you get what you need and perhaps more given the price point and that’s nothing to scoff at. I just think there are opportunities here to improve the end-user experience with the interface. Though on a purely technical level, you get everything you need.