Introduction

With motherboard manufacturers continuing to refresh their product lines to stay ahead of the curve across the price spectrum, the next on our list is MSI's MEG X870E Ace Max. Following in the footsteps of its successful X670E predecessor, this new guy steps down from the EATX form factor and instead goes with more widely-supported ATX dimensions, leaving the former to the likes of the X870 Godlike range.

The reduced PCB real estate, while offering greater case compatibility, likely means less space for features, but as usual the MEG range and indeed the Ace name represent very high-end motherboards and that's certainly still the case here. There are five M.2 ports alongside 10 Gbps Ethernet, 18 vCore power stages, massive heatsinks for the VRMs and SSDs, and dual USB4 ports, plus some serious eye candy too, of course.

We get new features as well, such as a 512 Mb (64 MB) BIOS, additional base clock tuning features in the EFI and on the PCB, along with other design tweaks compared to the previous MSI MEG Ace motherboard for AMD's Socket AM5. We'll be checking out what's new, how it performs and whether it's worth the rather large price tag.

Specifications