MSI MEG Z890 ACE Motherboard Review

MSI MEG Z890 ACE – Z890 Chipset
Intel Core Ultra 7 265KF (3.9Ghz) Twenty Core 3 x 4MB L2 Cache 30MB L3 Cache 
Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL360 Flux
1x nVidia RTX 4070
2x Patriot Viper Xtreme5 PC5-65600 DDR5 48GB (46-45-45-90)
Patriot P200 512GB SSD
Thermaltake Toughpower PF3 1050 Watt PSU
Windows 11 Pro 64bit 

ASUS ROG Maximus Z890 Extreme – Z890 Chipset
Intel Core Ultra 7 265K (3.9Ghz) Twenty Core 3 x 4MB L2 Cache 30MB L3 Cache 
Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL360 Flux
1x nVidia RTX 4070
2x Patriot Viper Venom PC5-57600 DDR5 32GB (40-40-40-77)
Patriot P200 512GB SSD
Thermaltake Toughpower PF3 1050 Watt PSU
Windows 11 Pro 64bit 

Z790 Aorus Elite X WiFi 7 – Z790 Chipset
Intel Core i9 14900k (3.0Ghz) Twenty Four Core 8 x 48KB L2 Cache 8 x 2MB L3 Cache 36MB 
Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL360 Flux
1x nVidia RTX 4070
2x Patriot Viper Venom PC5-57600 DDR5 32GB (40-40-40-77)
Patriot P200 512GB SSD
Thermaltake Toughpower PF3 1050 Watt PSU
Windows 11 Pro 64bit 

Our motherboard testing suite has been compiled to subject the system to a variety of different scenarios that help uncover some of the subtle differences in motherboard design.  Normally these differences are driven by the processor and BIOS programming but with the advent of an IMC and PCI Express moving to the CPU we have discovered that raw performance numbers are virtually identical across most systems using the same processor.  

Our new approach is to look at total system performance and minimize the variances.  The results will tell us how the system responded as a total package and also give us something to use in our comparisons.