Conclusion
The overall user experience with the MSI MAG B760 TOMAHAWK WIFI was quite good. I had no trouble setting up the system and it was the pinnacle of stability the entire time I had it on the test bench. However, this wasn’t a perfectly flawless review. Ordinarily, I don’t have issues with network connectivity but in this case, I did. The 2.5Gbps Realtek NIC wouldn’t auto-negotiate to 1.0Gbps to match the speed of the switch it was connected to. I had to go in and manually force it. I did end up adding a hub for more ports in the office during the review and decided to connect the MSI MAG B760 TOMAHAWK WIFI to that switch. I went ahead and re-enabled auto-negotiation which worked.
I’ve had my share of issues with Realtek NICs over the years and one of those things is inconsistent behavior with some switches. As it turns out the one it was connected to initially was relatively expensive for a consumer switch when it was new and the one that worked properly was super cheap. To add further confusion, it all goes through that initial switch at some point anyway.
At its core, the MSI MAG B760 TOMAHAWK WIFI has a really good foundation with decent VRMs, solid BIOS, a good layout, and a reasonable build quality. However, in order to hit the price point of around $180 or so at the time of this writing sacrifices had to be made. The audio CODEC is very old and not terribly impressive. As I said before it’s well implemented but this is literally the type of thing that dates back to the Z170 Express chipset days if not earlier.
On one hand, a 2.5Gbps NIC seems like a nice touch but in reality, it’s pretty close to a budget-level NIC. Issues like the one I experienced are commonplace with budget adapters. Of course, most people use wireless which MSI wisely invested in with the MSI MAG B760 TOMAHAWK WIFI. I can’t say I blame them but the budget features bring down what would otherwise be a stellar board.
Overclocking
If you’ve read up to this point, you can guess we didn’t do any real overclocking here. Arguments for traditional overclocking be dead or otherwise pointless aside, our 360mm AIO is just not up to seriously pushing this CPU. We get virtually the same performance with the power limits uncapped as we do running Intel’s. If anything, Intel’s more conservative values usually work better. I’ve seen some back and forth before but the MSI MAG B760 TOMAHAWK WIFI really seems to prefer Intel’s settings.
That being said, this board does have some ability to clock RAM which can be worthwhile though we didn’t really have any super high-performance DDR5 on hand for this test. That being said, you can do DDR5 6000MHz easily which wasn’t easy to do on $1,000 motherboards just one generation ago.
Final Points
The MSI MAG B760 TOMAHAWK WIFI isn’t perfect but to quote Han Solo: “She may not look like much but she’s got it where it counts.” That’s how I feel about the MSI MAG B760 TOMAHAWK WIFI. If you are in the market for an LGA 1700-based motherboard on a budget, the MSI MAG B760 TOMAHAWK WIFI is definitely worth a look. Just understand that this isn’t 2019 anymore. At $180, you have to make some sacrifices. If you can live with them then I am confident the MSI MAG B760 TOMAHAWK WIFI will serve you well for a long time. Check out our pricing widget below for the latest online pricing.
