The Intel Z590 Motherboard Overview: 50+ Motherboards Detailed
by Gavin Bonshor on January 19, 2021 10:15 AM ESTMSI MEG Z590 Ace & Z590 Ace Gold Edition
The MSI MEG Z590 Ace and MEG Z590 Ace Gold Edition both represent its enthusiast gaming series and sits just below the Godlike in both specifications and overall presentation. MSI has opted for a primarily black design with gold accents at various points of the board, including the power delivery and top M.2 heatsink, with more gold text on the audio PCB cover. It includes a stylish illuminated RGB MSI Dragon logo built into the rear panel cover, with more RGB LED's located within the bottom mesh of the chipset heatsink.
The only difference between the Z590 Ace and Z590 Ace Gold Edition is the aesthetic, with the latter decked out in gold and aluminum instead of black. The rest of the feature and controller set remains the same.
The MSI MEG Z590 Ace is stacked with features, including three full-length PCIe slots, with two operating at PCIe 4.0 x16 and x8/x8, with the bottom full-length slot locked to PCIe 3.0 x4. MSI includes plenty of storage options, including four M.2 slots, one PCIe 4.0 x4, and three PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA, with six SATA ports with RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 support. Going all out on memory capabilities, the Z590 Ace includes four memory slots, with support for up to DDR4-5333 and up to 128 GB.
The MSI MEG Z590 Ace Gold Edition which was announced alongside Rocket Lake
In the top right-hand corner is a two-digit LED debugger, while a power and reset button pairing is located in the bottom right-hand corner. MSI is advertising a 16+2 phase power delivery that uses doublers, with a pair of 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power inputs.
On the rear panel are a pair of Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports with two mini-DisplayPort passthrough inputs, two USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, and two USB 2.0 ports. A single HDMI video output allows users to utilize Intel's HD graphics, while a Realtek HD audio codec drives five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output. MSI uses Intel's I225-V 2.5 GbE controller, with the latest Intel AX210 Wi-Fi 6E CNVi, with support for BT 5.2 devices. Last but certainly not least, the Z590 Ace includes a clear CMOS button and a BIOS Flashback button to allow users an easy alternative to flash the board's firmware.
As it stands, MSI has an MSRP of $489 set for the MEG Z590 Ace, which is around $80 more than when it released the Z490 version. It does include a host of premium features and includes dual Thunderbolt 4 Type-C.
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lmcd - Tuesday, January 19, 2021 - link
8 cores is plenty for this generation of memory bandwidth. The problem is that Intel's next gen will have "16" processors where 8 are full cores, while AMD will have a full 16 cores with all that bandwidth. This generation, Intel is competitive but late.rahvin - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
Is this an attempt to be funny?pman6 - Tuesday, January 19, 2021 - link
meh. show me the $80 b560 boards.this is overkill for me.
Geef - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
Why is Intel always behind the game with memory speeds? 3200 is just a basic speed nowadays. Its great if your running CAS 14 chips but not many are. Why haven't they set a speed up to 4000 or 5000? They can keep XMP going just fine but wouldn't it be better to have systems automatically go that fast if they can?Deicidium369 - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
JEDEC tops out at 3200 - the fastest OFFICIAL speed it 3200. I have Gskill DDR4 4133 on my Gigabyte Z390 / i9900Kand JEDEC speeds are the same for AMD and Intel
Duncan Macdonald - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
For most games the 5800x is the sweet spot due to only having one CPU chiplet so no communication between chiplets. The 5900 and 5950 with two chiplets lose on many games due to the cost of inter chiplet communications exceeding the benefits from the extra cores.The 5900 and 5950 are best in programs that can make good use of all the cores (eg some video editing programs). For any game player with a 5900 or 5950, it might well be possible to get higher game performance by limiting Windows to only the first chiplet (using the numproc boot parameter).
Makaveli - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
I agree with you however the 5800X is really overpriced right now. So when you only have to pay abit more for the 5900X its looks like a far better deal. I think once Rocket lake is out we should see a price correction on the 5800X so the time to buy those will be in March.yeeeeman - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
This....this is wasted resources IMO. There was no need to make another platform on 14nm when they have the 10th gen which is just fine. I mean, the 10900k/10700k are great CPUs still, even compared to 5000 Ryzen series, so I don't know...they should've focused the efforts on bringing Alder Lake and its successor platforms forward.Hope Pat will make a bit of order here and make the schedules and ambitions of Intel a bit more daring, cause Bob just...milked it like there is no tomorrow. Refreshes after refreshes and refreshes.
Makaveli - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
That's what happens when you have a finance guy running the company he is just going to keep the wheels turning and not be aggressive. The new guy is an engineer and I believe he will push the pace which is what Intel needs now.Oxford Guy - Thursday, January 21, 2021 - link
Well, the world really needed a stack of 15 boards from just one motherboard company, too.