MSI MEG Z890 ACE Motherboard Review

Early in this review I talked about motherboard trends and how they tend to shape the market or define a product.  The last MSI MEG ACE motherboard I reviewed was back with the Z390 when board designs were quite different.  Backplates were not as common and motherboard styles tended to favor functionality over flash and didn’t change that much over the years.  For instance, the Z390 ACE featured the MSI Dragon logo over the chipset cooler and kept with three expansion slots.

Moving forward the current Z890 ACE its quite different wrapped in a Black and Gold color theme that appears to be quite common with past ACE motherboards.  While Black and Gold is a nice combo I also get the feeling it was picked to appeal to a certain growing market in the DIY computer segment.  While the expansion slot number remained the same the layout did change to accommodate more M.2 slots and attract the armchair spec warriors looking to min/max their builds.

In this review we took an indept look at the MSI MEG Z890 ACE motherboard.  This board is build on the Intel Z890 chipset supporting Intel Core Ultra processors and DDR5 memory.  The Intel Core Ultra is a very different processor from the previous Core i9 14900K having lost Hyperthreading, featuring a lower core count and featuring an NPU to better handle AI workloads.

As many reviewers have pointed out, the overall performance lower than the previous edition and the overall architecture is a little strange.  To make up for this the clock speed is higher, memory support is better and real world performance is good enough that most people will not notice.

For this review I decided to try out the Core Ultra 7 265KF.  It is the same basic processor as the 265K but without a video processor.  Generally speaking, the KF is often the better overclocker and yet was posting lower scores when used on the MSI MEG Z890 ACE.  Most of this can be attributed to a less aggressive boost curve and performance power targets.  When overclocking the system, I was humbled to see that certain changes would trigger a change to the power profiles and the system was more responsive to frequency changes than other boards I have used.

The system BIOS was a bit boring when it comes to overall design, the screens were rather dark and the navigation could have been improved.  Despite this, the available features were in very logical locations allowing me to quickly learn where certain features were located.  I’ve never been a fan of the “Favorites” menu but, I can easily see how promoting certain common features to “Favorites” can be a benefit with the MSI UEFI.

Onboard features such as the FROZR VRM cooling system and EZ latch system are great additions and go a long way to ensure system stability and easy of use.  ARGB lighting is very subtle and quite tasteful.  Of course, for ARGB zealots you can find plenty of 3-pin headers scattered around the motherboard to expand your lighting options.

Overall, I really enjoyed using the Z980 ACE, I was a little disappointed in the benchmark performance but had a blast overclocking the board.  In fact, I am looking forward to trying out the Core Ultra 7 265KF with some extreme cooling and maybe a few rounds of LN2.  From an installation and usability standpoint I have no complaints and for storage aficionados you have plenty of storage options including bifurcation options available in the system BIOS.

Unlocked CPU Support
DDR5 Loves to Overclock
Five M.2 Slots + Expansion Slot Options
PCI Express 5.0
Excellent Industrial Design
Unified Design

UEFI is dark
Super subtle LED lighting
Questionable default performance