Product on Review: MPG Z890 CARBON WIFI
Manufacturer: MSI
Street Price: USD 805 | GBP 489 | AUD 829
Today we’re continuing our coverage of motherboard’s based on Intel’s Z890 chipset with a popular series entrant from component specialists MSI. The MPG Z890 CARBON WIFI wears the moniker of a motherboard range well-liked for both features and aesthetics, and is set to be one of the stronger releases as the wider Z890 ecosystem is fleshed out ahead of any shakeups CES 2025 will bring in the new year.
Intel’s Z890 chipset is tailor-made for their new Core Ultra 200-series ‘Arrow Lake’ processors, boasting a new socket and baked-in features to make it a true next-generation platform, and is their counterpart to AMD’s X870/X870E chipset. PCI-Express 5 support for both GPU and M.2 Storage, DDR5 memory with high-performance CUDIMM compatibility, integrated WiFi 6E (upgraded to WiFi 7 on most models), a huge number of potential USB ports and even Thunderbolt 4 aggregate to connectivity that’s second-to-none.
MSI’s Carbon series has previously been priced as a mainstream full-feature design with aesthetic distinct from, in particular, their Gaming series. Its popularity and pedigree however have morphed it into a premium model for performance gaming sitting just below MSI’s MEG-series designs such as the ACE, UNIFY-X and GODLIKE.
The MPG Z890 CARBON WIFI incorporates 20+1+1+1-phase power delivery, which is a more significant provision than some competition and beyond the requirements of Z890’s reference specs. While specific CPU overclocking hardware optimisations are sparse on this model in particular, being starved or afflicted by dirty power shouldn’t be an issue.
In that vein MSI have also integrated supplemental 12V power into the ‘board for peripheral devices via an auxiliary 8-pin PCIe power connector. This can optionally supply as much as 252W of power to the board, for when limitations are tested to the brink and beyond by brutish GPUs and monstrous additional cooling.
MSI’s FROZR thermal design should help to keep things cool however, offering heatspreader effects for M.2 drives and more robust heatsinks for power delivery and PCIe 5 storage. Users will want to be mindful of their case’s internal air flow to really take advantage of this.
Speaking of those users, experienced system integrators and novice DIY PC assemblers will be pretty pleased to see MSI focusing so much on usability. The industry as a whole is moving in that direction, particularly at the premium end, and making installing and removing M.2 drives, GPUs and even WiFi antenna almost foolproof.
AI is an industry watchword and used extensively in MSI’s marketing, but that technology hasn’t really filtered down to consumer practicality at this point. While a Z890 platform will have AI capabilities thanks to the NPU integrated on each Core Ultra 200-series processor (and as a feature in any discrete GPU made since 2019), motherboards currently leverage pre-trained AI through tools to help with overclocking and maintaining system stability, none of which requires ‘AI’ hardware to operate. MSI’s exclusive feature is AI Boost, a tool that can overclock the Intel NPU but without a way to exploit that performance presently.
The MPG Z890 CARBON WIFI is priced at $499 excl Tax in the US, £490 in the UK and AUD $830 at the time of writing, placing it in a premium price tier but not at halo price status. With performance and features largely dictated by the chipset, integrated features and usability will be a major differentiating factor setting it against competing Z890 models. Comparisons to X870 are less impactful; Core Ultra 200-series vs Ryzen 9000-series contrasts are far more salient in those head-to-heads.
