Conclusion
This review evaluated the MSI MAG B850 GAMING PLUS MAX WiFi motherboard. This year, MSI decided to place their B850 GAMING PLUS line of boards into the MAG tier of gaming motherboards. MSI further added the “MAX” moniker to denote small upgrades and changes to the existing GAMING PLUS branding. We noted that the “MAX” will identify the latest editions across MSI’s full line of boards this year as well. The MAG B850 GAMING PLUS MAX WiFi is a full-sized ATX board supporting socket AM5, DDR5 memory up to 8200 M/T, as well as PCIE Gen5 x 16 and Gen5 M.2. The colour scheme has moved away from the black/yellow we have come to recognize and that is a good thing.
Installation and Use
The MSI MAG B850 GAMING PLUS MAX WiFi had no issues with setup or initial boot. Major component installs were not an issue. There was ample room for the CPU AIO cooler. The RAM sockets have a single moving latch and fit rather snugly. We had to push pretty hard to seat the modules. The M.2 slots were no issue. There is only one native heatsink, and our Spatium is so big we couldn’t use it. The EZ-Clips are very easy to use on the M.2 modules. All M.2 slots were usable even with a good-sized GPU. M.2_2 was a bit of a tight squeeze, even for a module with no heatsink. We really like the EZ-PCIe latch. This is usually seen on more expensive MSI boards, so it was nice to see it included as part of the “MAX” package. It truly makes installing a big GPU easy.
First boot, BIOS navigation, and Windows 11 installation were without a single hitch. Since the board came with an outdated BIOS version, we used “M-Flash” to update, which was very simple to use and proceeded without an issue. The BIOS is very similar, if not identical, to the other MSI motherboards we have reviewed in the recent past. The Click X BIOS is very responsive and well-organised. All benchmarks ran without error. We have noticed that the VRM cooling is running a bit higher than we have seen in the past year. That being said, the result was identical to the MSI GAMING PLUS WiFi PZ, and both boards ran all benchmarks and prolonged Cinebench without an issue.
Final Points
All in all, the MSI MAG B850 GAMING PLUS MAX WiFi is a very sound, well-built motherboard. The board offers ease of installation and ease of setup. The one-click BIOS options make for easy overclocking, as they should be. The motherboard performed as expected and was very stable. There were simply no surprises. We liked the new white/silver look. The addition of the EZ PCIe latching system is very much appreciated; however seems to be about the only obvious functional upgrade under the “MAX” umbrella we could identify.
When you stack it all up side by side, this B850 GAMING PLUS “MAX” motherboard is minimally different from any other MSI B850 GAMING PLUS motherboard offered in the last year or so. The performance in our benchmarks seems to show that. Whether an increase in BIOS chip size is going to be helpful remains to be seen, but honestly, this board seems to be simply that, a name and colour change from what is already available, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.