Introduction
Today marks the release of AMD’s newest line of chipsets, and MSI has announced AMD X870 and X870E motherboards with a refresh of new designs, and features. Today we have the MSI MPG X870E CARBON WIFI on our test bench for a release day review, this motherboard has an MSRP of $499.99.
At this price range, the MSI MPG X870E CARBON WIFI offers the second-highest configuration from MSI in the X870E chipset series. The MSI MPG lineup sits above the MAG series, but below the MEG series, right in the middle, geared for the performance gaming crowd. However, for this generation, MSI has announced four motherboards, two are X870, and two are X870E-based.
The MSI MPG 870E CARBON WIFI takes the spot as MSI’s second most feature-rich board in the X870E lineup that it offers. You’ll find that it is loaded with USB4 and WiFi 7, and a very robust VRM configuration combined with two, yes two LAN ports one of them being 5Gbps, as well as 4x M.2 storage with two of them being PCIe 5.0 x4 Gen5 capable.
The AMD X870 and X870E chipsets are new chipsets for AM5 motherboards announced back at Computex 2024. Though these new AM5 chipsets were announced alongside AMD Zen 5 CPUs (Ryzen 9000 series), they are not required to run Zen 5 CPUs, and have no performance differences for Zen 5 CPUs, or Zen 4, compared to previous AMD X670 and X670E series chipsets.
Primarily, the addition of USB4 is added as a requirement, and the number of PCIe lanes changes around a bit to allow for features such as Gen5 M.2 connectors, and Gen5 PCIe expansion slots. This does give motherboard manufacturers the chance to feature new designs, updated components, and perhaps even better routing of lanes for higher DDR5 memory frequencies. AMD has a great comparison chart here that shows the differences in PCIe assignments, and requirements.
Packaging and Contents
For the MSI MPG X870E CARBON WIFI MSI has provided a handful of items with the motherboard that can come in useful. As with previous generations of MSI motherboards you will have a thumb drive with drivers, and software installed, however we recommend you go straight to the MSI (Or AMD for chipset) website to download the most up to date drivers for this motherboard.
You will also find the standard SATA 6Gb/s cables (2), an ARGB extension cable, a 1 to 3 EZ Conn-Cable (For RGB connections), an EZ Front panel connector, a 1 to 2 RGB extension cable, MSI’s EZ Wi-Fi Antenna, a book of cable stickers, and the standard regulatory notice and installation guide. Outside of these items we do want to have a separate note regarding the EZ M.2 Clip II, and the EZ M.2 Clip II Remover. While all of the M.2 standoffs are already installed, MSI has included one of their EZ M.2 Clip’s as well as a tool to allow for easier remover, which is greatly appreciated.
MSI MPG X870E CARBON WIFI Features
On first look at the MSI MPG X870E CARBON WIFI you will that the cooling is the highlight of the motherboard. We have MSI’s FROZR system providing an extended heat-pipe heatsink system for VRM cooling, the M.2 Shield FROZR for M.2 cooling, and an enlarged heat sink that covers even the SATA ports on this motherboard.
Outside of this you will see three total PCIe X16 slots (note* not all operate at x16, even though they are full-sized), two of which have metal reinforcement, on-board power and reset buttons, as well as a De-Bug LED near the 24-pin power connector. The PCB is an 8-layer NPG-170D server-grade design with 2oz thickened copper.
Power Delivery
MSI has decided to go with a beefy 18+2+1 Duet Rail Power System (DPRS), one of MSI’s Ultra Power designs, for the MSI MPG X870E CARBON WIFI. This means 18 for VCore, 2 for SOC, and 1 for MISC power, and VCore and SOC are at 110A for massive current support. This incorporates dual power connectors for the CPU, along with a 110A Smart Power Stage design to provide solid power when pushing this motherboard to the limits.
For the VRM’s on this generation MSI has decided to provide a very robust cooling solution, their FROZR GUARD solution. For the CARBON series there is a heat-pipe heatsink for the VRM cooling, to the extended heatsinks, along with additional thermal pads on the chokes. MSI is using 7 W/mK Thermal Pads.
Memory and Storage
Above average in this motherboard, you will have a maximum installed memory capacity of 256GB (64GB per stick), of non-ECC, un-buffered memory, with a maximum overclock of up to 8400MHz+ with the Ryzen 9000 series. While we do not have memory on hand to test this claim, we had zero issue getting our Patriot memory kit to its rated 6200MHz using the XMP settings. The MSI X870E CARBON WIFI is designed using MSI’s SMT welding process and MSI Memory Boost technology for the DIMMs.
Looking at storage options for this motherboard, there are plenty. MSI has gone with four (4) total M.2 NVMe drive slots, with the top two being PCIe 5.0 x4 Gen5 (Both via the CPU). It is important to note that while you will have a full 16 lanes available to the top PCIe slot when using the top M.2 slot, once you utilize either the second PCIe or M.2 slot it will drop to 8 lanes only.
Beyond this there are an additional two (2) M.2 Gen4 slots provided by the chipsets. It is important to note that all of the M.2 slots provide cooling using MSI’s M.2 Shield Frozr for both the top back rear of your M.2 drives, and are all 100% tool-less to remove the heat sink and drive itself. All M.2 slots have thermal pads included, front and back. If you are looking to install a M.2 drive that has its own cooling with a back plate you will need to remove the thermal pad to allow for installation.
The only other item of note regarding the M.2 drive’s is the lower three (3) drives use MSI’s EZ M.2 Clip II system, which is just about the easiest M.2 retention system we have run into, while the upper most drive has a more traditional retention with a rotating clip. The lower three M.2 slots have their own shared M.2 Shield Frozr heatsink. Outside of the M.2 slots you have the ability for up to four (4) SATA drives in the 6Gb/s ports located under the chipset cooling heatsink.
Expansion
The MSI MPG X870E CARBON WIFI has an enlarged PCH heatsink as well. MSI has gone with three total PCIe x16 slots, however, only the upper most slot is capable of x16 connection. As we mentioned in the Storage section above, the second slot is limited to x4 speeds, and the top slot will drop to x8 when a 2nd Gen5 M.2 drive is installed.
MSI has decided to provide their Steel Armor II system for metal reinforcement on the top two slots that are fed from the CPU, which is important considering the size of GPU’s today, and the advent of AI PCIe cards coming to market. We are quite happy with MSI’s decision to provide an easy GPU removal and installation with the EZ PCIe Release. This works by the user pressing a button located on the right side of the motherboard which releases the GPU from the slot, and is quite easy to use.
Users should be aware that installation of a M.2 drive in the lower slots might be hampered by their GPU, however the upper slot should not be affected as there is enough space for most drives to fit into the top M.2 slot with a GPU installed.
I/O
MSI has decided to make full use of the space on the rear I/O panel for the MSI MPG X870E CARBON WIFI. There are plenty of USB A and C ports, RJ45 LAN ports, an HDMI port, wifi connectors, motherboard buttons, as well as the standard audio ports. One thing there is none of on the rear of this motherboard are USB 2.0 ports, instead everything is a minimum of 10Gbps up to 40Gbps.
There are four (4) 10Gbps USB-A ports from the chipset, one (1) 10Gbps from the CPU, four (4) more additional 10Gbps ports from an RTS5420 chip. Following this there are a total of two (2) 10 Gbps Type-C ports with one from the CPU and one from the chipset, along with two (2) more 40Gbps Type-C ports from a ASM4242 chip.
This is an astounding amount of USB connectivity, all of it being high speed, for the back panel. After this there is the ability to connect up to a 7.1 Channel Audio system though the S/PDF and standard connectors, all through the Realtek ALC4080 Codec.
We want to take a closer look at the network options provided with this motherboard. The biggest thing to note is that there are two (2) total RJ45 LAN ports. These are from two different Realtek chips, the 5Gbps is from the 8126 chip, and the 2.5Gbps is from the 8125 chip. In our testing we saw no issues with performance of these connections. The WIFI and Bluetooth is provided from a pre-installed M.2 (Key-E). You will have WIFI 7 support, as well as Bluetooth 5.4 support with this motherboard.
Going past the rear I/O connections, there are still plenty of front panel/on-board connectors for expansion. All of the front panel USB connectors are provided by the X870E chipset. This includes one (1) 20Gbps Type-C with 27W charging, four (4) 5Gbps Type-A connectors, along with four (4) USB 2.0 ports.
The RGB connections are not forgotten on this motherboard, as there are a total of four (4) options for connection. You will be able to use one (1) traditional 4-pin RGB LED connector, as well as an additional three (3) A-RAINBOW V2 (ARGB Gen2) connectors. And of course, all of these connectors can be controlled via the MSI Mystic Light RGB software.
If there is any place that this motherboard lacks on physical features, it might be the fan connectors, and even then its nothing out of the ordinary. You have a total of seven (7) 4-pin connectors, one (10 for a CPU fan, one (1) for a water-pump or fan, and an additional five (5) system fan connectors.
The MSI X870E CARBON WIFI supports DIY 2.0 FROZR SYNC, which allows to connect and synchronize MSI coolers and cases with strategically positioned pin-header locations, including a dedicated pump-fan header. You get exclusive EZ CONN which allows for 3A power delivery supporting auto-detect for dedicated MSI PC components. The motherboard also supports FROZR Control, to setup fan profiles and user scenarios in software, as well as FROZR AI Cooling for intelligent fan control. RGB is supported via MSI Mystic Light and software.
UEFI
As is normal for most motherboards, MSI is using a 256 Mbit AMI UEFI BIOS that will be familiar to most users. When you first enter the BIOS you will be greeted with a screen asking you to choose either ”PBO Auto” or “PBO Enable” which are MSI Performance Presets to allow for very quick settings for overclocking. After you select an option you are presented with either the “EZ Mode” or “Advanced mode” for the BIOS, which MSI is calling “CLICK BIOS X”.
EZ Mode will provide you with an overview of your system settings, and quick ability to adjust PBO and Memory speeds via EXPO pre-sets. When looking in the “Advanced Mode” you will initially see a system status overview, but can quickly jump to any section you are looking for.
There is very little new or unexpected din this BIOS with this X870E chipset being an incremental advancement over the previous generation, but we do want to highlight a few things. PBO (Performance Boost Overdrive), one of the settings most will be looking for, can be found in both the “Advanced” section as well as the “Overclocking” section.
As always, you can take a look at our gallery below to get an idea of what options there are in the BIOS, and its general layout. One last thing we want to mention before moving onto the testing sections is that although it is called a “CLICK BIOS X”, we had no luck having a mouse work within the UEFI, however our keyboard had no issues in navigating the interface.
M.2 Performance
Starting with AMD’s release of the X870 and X870E chipsets we have decided to do an upgrade to our M.2 NVME testing procedure. As you have seen in some of our other release day reviews, we are using the MSI SPATIUM M580 FROZR, and the MSI SPATIUM M570 PRO FROZR, which we reviewed early in 2024, and at the end of 2023, both of which we loved in testing. For each of the tests we are running the M580 in the primary slot on the motherboard (M2_1), with the M570 in each additional slot on the motherboard (M2_2/3/4) simultaneously. This allows us to test the throughput allowed by the motherboard, whether the M.2 is provided by the chipset or the CPU.
The MSI MPG X870E CARBON WIFI with the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X had no issues maxing out the M580 on any of your testing with the highest speed being 14,592.94 MB/s read and 12,950.93 MB/s write speeds. When you look at the results below you will see that it also had no issues maxing out the M570 when installed in the second Gen5 slot, with a speed of 12,384.5 MB/s read and 11,682.38 MB/s write. Beyond this there was essentially no difference in speeds when using either Gen4 slots, with speeds right around 7,141.15 MB/s read and 6,922.76 MB/s write.
Memory Bandwidth
With our memory tests we are going to be performing a slightly different benchmark test going forward, instead of performing the AIDA64 Read and Write tests individually, we will be performing the AIDA64 Cache & Memory Benchmark going forward. With the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X, the MSI MPG X870E CARBON WIFI, with all UEFI settings at default, with memory set to 6200MHz, the read performance for this motherboard is 77,118 MB/s, the write performance comes in at 76,438 MB/s, and new for this test, the copy performance clocks in at 70,564 MB/s. Take a look below at the screen shot of the results to see the full Cache test results, and further information on the speed settings of all of our hardware.
PCMark 10
With the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X, the MSI MPG X870E CARBON WIFI is able to achieve a score of 9,165 in our PCMark 10 full system benchmark. The CPU frequency responded as we expected, and this is a score in-line with what we expected from this motherboard and CPU combination.
Cinebench R23
With Cinebench we ran the multi-core test multiple times, and consistently received a score of around 28,337, then for the single-core test we scored 2,014. These scores are a little below what we have come to expect from the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X, but not a large enough difference to effect the realized performance of this motherboard.
Blender Benchmark
With Blender we were able to achieve 184.68 samples per minute for the monster test, 133.72 for junkshop, and 93.90 for the classroom tests, which is around what we have previously seen with the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X.
3DMark
We ran both Time Spy and the CPU Profile tests with 3DMark. With the Time Spy test we achieved a CPU score of 14,882, and for the CPU profile on max threads we achieve 12,846, again this is around what we typically see with the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X.
V-RAY 6 Benchmark
Running V-Ray we achieved a score of 31,577, which is around what is typical with V-Ray 6 with the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X.
VRM Temperature
All reported temperatures are taken via the latest HWiNFO Beta, and measured temperatures are taken with a hand-held laser thermometer to find the highest temperature point. As a reminder, these temperatures are taken at an approximate ambient temperature of ~75°F (~24°C), and are taken after 15 minutes of Cinebench R23. During this test we saw a reported VRM temperature of 65°C, and a chipset temperature maxing out at 60.1°C. This corresponds to a measured maximum temperature of 57.4°C on the VRM cooling, and 49.7°C on the chipset.
Conclusion
With its $499 MSRP, the MSI MPG X870E CARBON WIFI is priced at high-end enthusiast levels for an X870E motherboard. For this cost you will have a motherboard with an above-average cooling solution, plenty of M.2 slots for storage expansion, completely tool-less M.2 installation, as well as a second metal-reinforced PCIe slot.
Installlation and Use
Installation of the MSI MPG X870E CARBON WIFI was about as smooth as you can expect, especially considering the attention to detail MSI has put into the DIY friendly aspect of this motherboard. This starts with the completely tool-less attachment of the M.2 coolers, to most of the M.2 slots using the EZ M.2 Clip II by default, and the top most slot can be converted to this system with the included tool.
After this you also have the EZ PCIe Release for simple removal of your GPU if you ever need to, with quite literally the push of a button. Then there are the 4-pin power connectors that can be found in easy to access locations. Following all of this, even though this is a pre-release motherboard, Windows 11 had no issues recognizing all devices and finding drivers out of the box, and the De-Bug LED can come in handy with any troubleshooting a user might need.
Final Points
In this motherboard refresh, based on the AMD X870E chipset, the new MSI MPG X870E CARBON WIFI offers MSI’s second-highest X870E configuration, throwing in all the bells and whistles, loaded with features for the enthusiast. Though this is in MSI’s MPG lineup, it feels like a tier above with the amount of attention to detail and features provided. You will be paying for it, $499.99 MSRP is no small amount of change and sits at the higher end of pricing. This price range demands it deliver at an enthusiast level, but it feels like MSI has pulled that off with its design and functionality.
The MSI MPG X870E CARBON WIFI has a very robust VRM configuration that appears to be cooled extremely well. This will allow high-end CPUs to run at full speed, without throttling or having issues. It should also allow for further tweaking pushing PBO or even curve optimizer. This is a highly capable motherboard, the cooling provided by MSI’s FROZR system is among the best we have seen so far on the X870/X870E platform, keeping the motherboards VRMs cool and stable under load.
The MSI MPG X870E CARBON WIFI is feature-rich, sporting PCIe 5.0 x16 for the GPU, and 2x PCIe 5.0 x4 Gen5 for NVMe SSD performance, along with a 5Gbps LAN port, and a 2.5Gbps LAN port, as well as USB4 and WiFi 7. It has flexibility in its expansion options as well, giving you options for fast storage, or an experience focused purely on gaming performance, and flexibility in networking configurations. This motherboard should allow you to expand to fill the role for many types of users, gamers, creative, or workstations. If you’ve been waiting for that upgrade to AM5, and you really want to go all the way, the MSI MPG X870E CARBON WIFI should fit the bill well.