MSI MEG Z590 ACE Review

👤by David Mitchelson Comments 📅28-04-21
Conclusion

So far in our venture into the world of Intel Z590 we’ve looked at the top-end models that each of the board partners have to offer and today has been the turn of MSI to show their hand, and this one does not disappoint.

A continuing trend into this seasons Intel boards is the use of dark, monochrome themes and MSI has decided to follow suit, the actual design of this Z590 ACE compared to the Z490 version is largely the same in terms of the styling – just subtle adjustments here and there. Although this scheme is overdone by many, we still feel it looks brilliant and the attention to detail is most certainly there. Pairing this board up with other components should be easy and it’ll look impressive once complete.


From a high-performance model like ACE we expect MSI to go over and above in the features department and for the most part they do deliver. There are voltage checkpoints, EZ Debug LED, onboard power/reset buttons, dual BIOS switch and amplified connectivity such as Thunderbolt 4 which is lovely to see. We also like that ACE can support up to 5400MHz DDR4 and serves up 4x PCIe M.2 SSD slots. The only drawback comes in the from of USB connectivity with 6x ports taken up with the slower USB 2.0 and USB 3.2 Gen1. We only get 2x USB 3.2 Gen2 ports and feel that this is unbalanced given the status/cost of ACE.

ACE gave us great results in our benchmark tests and further to this, our Intel Core i9-11900K struggles with stability once we exceed 5GHz on all cores, but ACE was able to hit our milestone with 1.35v.

It will come as no surprise that ACE holds a price-tag of GBP £500 | USD $499 | AUD $850. This marks the board out as one of the more expensive models on the market. We can vouch for this boards ability to deliver excellent performance but there is no denying that the outright cost is a lot to shell out for.

ACE is feature-rich and a stunning example of an Intel Z590 motherboard. If you’re looking for that ‘extra’ board, this one should be considered.

Pros
+ Wonderfully crafted
+ Loaded with advanced features
+ Offers solid performance
+ Plenty of USB connectivity
+ Includes Thunderbolt 4 ports
+ Up to 8 fan headers
+ Support for up to 5400MHz DDR4 memory
+ Benefits from a protective backplate
+ Offers four M.2 slots (including PCIe 4.0)
+ Extensive accessories bundle

Cons
- Still being supplied with USB 2.0 ports
- Expensive!

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