The Intel Z590 Motherboard Overview: 50+ Motherboards Detailed
by Gavin Bonshor on January 19, 2021 10:15 AM ESTMSI MAG Z590 Torpedo
Over the years, we've seen motherboard vendors have tried out new styles and aesthetics. Some have turned into successful ranges, such as ASRock's Taichi. MSI has announced a new model to its MAG Arsenal Gaming series called the Torpedo, which aims to sink the competition with a new color scheme similar to ASRock's Extreme series of boards. The MSI MAG Z590 Torpedo uses dark metallic blue throughout, including on the rear panel cover, heatsinks, and two of the four memory slots. It also includes integrated RGB LEDs built into the chipset heatsink and has a follows a militaristic theme.
The MSI MAG Z590 Torpedo has two full-length slots, with the top slot featuring support for PCIe 4.0 x16, the second slot locked down to PCIe 3.0 x4, and two additional PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. For storage, the Torpedo has three M.2 slots with one operating at PCIe 4.0 x4, and two with support for both PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA, with six SATA ports capable of RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10. The board has four memory slots with up to 128 GB of capacity, but MSI hasn't provided any QVL lists at present, so JEDEC spec is listed at DDR4-3200.
On the rear panel is one USB 3.2 G2x2 Type-C, one USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, and two USB 2.0 ports. The board uses dual RJ45, coming via an Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE controller, and the other one by an Intel I219-V Gigabit one. A total of five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output are driven by a Realtek ALC4080 HD audio codec. In contrast, a DisplayPort and HDMI video output pairing allows users to benefit from Intel's integrated HD graphics. Finishing off the rear panel is a small but handy BIOS Flashback button.
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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.