Conclusion

so we'd recommend MSI lop at least £20 in order to stay competitive at this end of the market...

MSI releasing a full roster of Z490 boards comes as no surprise. The names in the range are familiar enough - Godlike, Ace, Unify, Carbon, et al - and the company has taken the opportunity to revamp the styling to reflect today's trends.

The MPG Z490 Gaming Carbon WiFi is a good case in point. We like the understated look, lots of space between the cooler and primary x16 slot, decent layout throughout, and the fact that the latest BIOSes offer flawless stability and correct interpretation of Intel's CPU speeds, which is more than can be said for some of the competition.

We'd like M.2 cooling to be double-sided, could definitely do with onboard buttons, and would ideally like a third M.2 slot, even with the lane contention that may bring.

The transition between generations pushes price up to £260 or so. That feels a mite expensive when up against cheaper offerings like the Asus ROG Strix Z490-H Gaming and Aorus Elite AC, so we'd recommend MSI lop at least £20 in order to stay competitive at this end of the market.

The Gaming Carbon range has always been a good staple for MSI. The Z490 variant gets most things right, but a few shortcomings precludes outright recommendation.

The Good		The Bad
Good looks RGB is understated Runs Core i9-10900K exactly right Good spacing between slots		No onboard buttons Feels £20 too expensive

MSI MPG Z490 Gaming Carbon WiFi

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The MSI MPG Z490 Gaming Carbon WiFi motherboard is available to purchase from Scan Computers.

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At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

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How large is the BIOS chip on this motherboard? Any comments about VRM quality/efficiency?

Also how does:

hexus
Runs Core i9-10900K exactly right

fit with

Such a move bypasses the chip's 125W TDP. In MSI's case, that means 1.247V and around 200W of CPU package power.

Surely that's running it out of spec, not right?

kalniel
How large is the BIOS chip on this motherboard? Any comments about VRM quality/efficiency?

Also how does:

fit with

Surely that's running it out of spec, not right?

I mean exactly right in terms of the turbo frequencies mandated by Intel - 4.8GHz all-core and achieving 5.3GHz on up to two cores.

They have basically said overclocking is fine and allowing massive tdp's is fine

My previous reply seems to have been lost. TechPowerUp posted that the Russians at Greetech made a review with thermal imaging and a 10900k at 5.3GHz - the pictures show the VRM naked part, right next to the main heatsink, reaching 122c. I think it would have been nice if you measured the VRMs during overclock too;) After all we would buy a, say, 10700k to overclock it. Your review would be helpful to check if their results are repeatable and correct.

Yes that can be beneficial in my opinion.