MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon Preview

👤by Matthew Hodgson Comments 📅08-10-18
Box, Bundle & First Look

Traditionally, MSIs colour scheme has always been black and red, though recently we’ve seen a shift towards different styles and colours. The MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon uses a blue and purple theme. The front of the box gives very little information other than mention of the Z390 chipset as well as MSI’s Mystic Light and a pre-installed rear IO shield.



Within the box there are a large number of bundled accessories which include the following:

- MSI User Guide
- Quick Installation Guide
- Software/Driver DVD
- 2 x SATA Data Cables
- 1 x MSI SLI HB Bridge M
- 1 x Cable Label Sticker Sheet
- 2 x M.2 Screws
- 1 x MSI Case Badge
Various RGB Extension Cables

Please remember that the rear IO shield is pre-attached, so is obviously missing from this section. A large portion of the PC building enthusiast community have forgotten to install this crucial piece, only to find it’s impossible to add in later, so we like to see these arrive pre-installed.

The MSI SLI Bridge included with the motherboard is compatible with the NVIDIA GEFORCE 10-Series GPUs, though is not compatible with the latest Turing GPUs, such as the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080Ti, which use the new NVLINK interconnect.


As is generally the case with MSIs Gaming Pro Carbon series, there’s very little in the way of colour, focussing on the Carbon scheme of black, grey and silver. This should coordinate with other components easily, and help to show off any RGB lighting effects that you may employ.

The ATX motherboard, measuring in at 305mm x 244mm, packs a pair of M.2 connections, both supporting NVMe and SATA storage; the lower one is equipped with a thermal heatsink connected to the Southbridge, helping to minimise any thermal throttling from some of the hotter NVMe disk drives on the market. Reinforced DIMM and PCI-E slots also help round out the rugged feature set on this board, helping longevity and stability by shielding these sensitive connections from interference.

MSI’s Mystic Light RGB lighting is equipped along the rear-right edge of the motherboard, as well as the very top-left above the VRM heatsinks.



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