MSI MPG B850I Edge Ti Wi-Fi

[Combatus]

MSI is a little late to the SFF party, but alongside higher end Intel and AMD options, it comes in swinging with a solid Mini-ITX AMD B850 motherboard for $250. With one or two quirks, does it stack up to similarly-priced and more established competition?

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[Chaitanya]

According to power search on newegg there are 0 B series board with USB4. Its quite odd that board makers arent providing those on MiniITX boards which tend of be low on IO connectivity due to space. Also location of USB header and other in between PCIe slot and rear IO is quite concerning.

https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?Submit=Property&Subcategory=22&N=100007625%20601409239%20601409297&IsPowerSearch=1

 

[_roman_]

Clear CMOS Button is something easy to implement. That is a very nice feature.

It is a budget mainboard. Therefore if the price is right no criticism .

 

[Event Horizon]

Seems like a solid mini-itx mobo. Just need the perfect case to pair with it.

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

$250 for so little I/O ports. Ew.... and it's a "budget" mobo with the worst naming scheme, being "created" by the wonderful marketing team.

 

[TheLostSwede]

According to power search on newegg there are 0 B series board with USB4. Its quite odd that board makers arent providing those on MiniITX boards which tend of be low on IO connectivity due to space. Also location of USB header and other in between PCIe slot and rear IO is quite concerning.

https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?Submit=Property&Subcategory=22&N=100007625%20601409239%20601409297&IsPowerSearch=1

It's not so odd when they want to sell you an X870 board instead, since those have USB4...
On the other hand, there only appears to be two of them, one from Asus and one from Gigabyte.

 

[zero989z]

Dual rank 8000 support

 

[The Tech Guy]

Something that was not noted was that while the WiFi 7 module connectors have a thread on them it is SMA female so is useless if like me your existing much better high gain antenna with longer leads has a male RP-SMA connector! Still it looks an easy swap out to a female RP-SMA with MHF4 pigtails for the card. I think most older boards with RP-SMA connectors were all female. Besides this unnecessary annoyance I think this will be my next board paired with an AMD 9000G series CPU.

 

[Blueberries]

I'm not sure an M.2 drive is going to perform any better with that little fan than if they had just filled that space with aluminum fins.

 

[Hxx]

I like MSI’s EFI but the GB x870i Aorus pro ice is a much better board and worth the small price bump over this one

 

[TheLostSwede]

Something that was not noted was that while the WiFi 7 module connectors have a thread on them it is SMA female so is useless if like me your existing much better high gain antenna with longer leads has a male RP-SMA connector! Still it looks an easy swap out to a female RP-SMA with MHF4 pigtails for the card. I think most older boards with RP-SMA connectors were all female. Besides this unnecessary annoyance I think this will be my next board paired with an AMD 9000G series CPU.

You are ware that it's illegal to change the antennas on WiFi 7 products, right?
That's why all consumer WiFi 7 routers have fixed antennas.

I'm not sure an M.2 drive is going to perform any better with that little fan than if they had just filled that space with aluminum fins.

Go read some of the SSD reviews here, you'll be surprised.

 

[EarthDog]

You are ware that it's illegal to change the antennas on WiFi 7 products, right?
That's why all consumer WiFi 7 routers have fixed antennas.

First ive heard of that, Links?

Any 7 devices on motherboards (if routers were mentioned, apologies) dont seem to be. And you can change 7 routers physically (you can Google and get multiple vids). They also sell 7 antennas.....

According to power search on newegg

Trash search. Relies on plebs inputting data right.

 

[TheLostSwede]

First ive heard of that, Links?

Any 7 devices on motherboards (if routers were mentioned, apologies) dont seem to be. And you can change 7 routers physically (you can Google and get multiple vids). They also sell 7 antennas.....

Only commercial routers where the deployer is allowed to transmit with higher power than the WiFi 7 regulation allows for, can have detachable antennas on the router.
It started with WiFi 6E and it's related to the 6 GHz band, so I guess routers without 6 GHz radios can have detachable antennas, but I haven't seen one.

It says integrated antenna, but it means non removable when it comes to consumer devices. I guess the WiFi cards are excluded as long as they can't act as an AP.

 

[The Tech Guy]

You are ware that it's illegal to change the antennas on WiFi 7 products, right?
That's why all consumer WiFi 7 routers have fixed antennas.

You're getting confused with a transmitter and a receiver. These are two different things. The router is a transmitter and the WiFI module connected to a motherboard is a receiver and as such the antenna for it can be modified to anything you want. I know the FCC in the US has regulations on transmitters not that any other country has to comply with the FCC! I have my amateur radio license so I am qualified to comment on this subject.

 

[TheLostSwede]

You're getting confused with a transmitter and a receiver. These are two different things. The router is a transmitter and the WiFI module connected to a motherboard is a receiver and as such the antenna for it can be modified to anything you want. I know the FCC in the US has regulations on transmitters not that any other country has to comply with the FCC! I have my amateur radio license so I am qualified to comment on this subject.

No confusion, the cards are still a transmitter, otherwise it would be a one way communication standard.
The EU has even stricter regulation for WiFi, which is why the transmission power is so much lower in the EU for both the 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands.
You're clearly an amateur if you think WiFi works like how you described. I used to work for a router manufacturer if you want to pull that card.

 

[The Tech Guy]

No confusion, the cards are still a transmitter, otherwise it would be a one way communication standard.
The EU has even stricter regulation for WiFi, which is why the transmission power is so much lower in the EU for both the 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands.
You're clearly an amateur if you think WiFi works like how you described. I used to work for a router manufacturer if you want to pull that card.

Yes I will concede a WiFi module does transmit and receive RF and Bluetooth signals but it's only in the milliwatt range. At the same power the range decreases with higher frequency. My main point here is changing out an antenna will not increase the RF output of a WiFi module it can only divert, direct, or concentrate radio energy in some direction. Increasing the wavelength of an antenna will allow more of the wave to hit the transmitting or receiving antenna thereby increasing it's ability to send or receive.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Yes I will concede a WiFi module does transmit and receive RF and Bluetooth signals but it's only in the milliwatt range. At the same power the range decreases with higher frequency. My main point here is changing out an antenna will not increase the RF output of a WiFi module it can only divert, direct, or concentrate radio energy in some direction. Increasing the wavelength of an antenna will allow more of the wave to hit the transmitting or receiving antenna thereby increasing it's ability to send or receive.

I think you're the one being confused. Yes, many WiFi modules also support Bluetooth, but it's not something they all do and Bluetooth has nothing to do with WiFi. In the US you're allowed to transmit at up to 36 dBm (4 W) on the 2.4 GHz band, so you're somewhat off here too, but yes, in Europe it's 20 dBm (100 mW) for consumer products. Since it's not Watts that matter, but the total attenuation in dBm, you can change that outside of the legal range by changing the antenna and this is why it is banned in the 6 GHz band, so consumers don't go and interfere with licensed transmissions, since some 6 GHz frequencies are shared with other things, same as in the 5 GHz band where there are gaps for things like weather radar.
You're obviously not going to boost your range like with your amateur radios, since the radio transmitter in WiFi is hardware limited by the chip makers to comply with the various regional regulations, but back when 802.11g became commonly used, it was quite easy to boost the range outside of the regulation by swapping in some better antennas with better attenuation, which sometimes caused issues. There was a company I visited in the US many years ago that had a special type of antenna design that allowed them to send WiFi signals 3-4 km without any extra power boost by the router/AP with their Directional Helical CP antennas. They had a few different ones like the one pictured below which is a mid-range model. Yes, it's directional, but you can clearly extend the transmit power by swapping out the antenna and yes, you could connect one of these straight to a WiFi card, but they are only available for the 2.4 GHz WiFi band.

 

[EarthDog]

Only commercial routers

Gotcha.. TY. Good info!

I guess the WiFi cards are excluded as long as they can't act as an AP.

I believe the person you responded to was talking about the Wi-Fi on the back of their motherboard and why I was confused/never heard of that.

To confirm, for @The tech guy .......we are allowed to change the antenna on the back of a (in this case, integrated) Wi-Fi card, right???

 

[TheLostSwede]

I believe the person you responded to was talking about the Wi-Fi on the back of their motherboard and why I was confused/never heard of that.

To confirm, for @The tech guy .......we are allowed to change the antenna on the back of a (in this case, integrated) Wi-Fi card, right???

As long as it can't be used as an AP or exceed the WiFi transmit power limits where you live, yes.

 

[The Tech Guy]

I believe the person you responded to was talking about the Wi-Fi on the back of their motherboard and why I was confused/never heard of that.

To confirm, for @The tech guy .......we are allowed to change the antenna on the back of a (in this case, integrated) Wi-Fi card, right???

It's kind of laughable to even think that any government has someone out there looking for someone that has changed out their 3-5dbi antenna for a say a 10dbi one on their computer WiFi card! I don't live in the US or Europe so any of their rules and regulations don't apply to me. It's far far more likely that some other piece of equipment using the 5 or 6GHz band is going to interfere with your modem than your modems going to interfere with their use. I thought the reason modems did not have removable antennas was because it would make it far easier to put an amplifier between the modem and antenna to increase the output power above the countries legal limit. There are many antenna configurations that can boost the range of any transmitter or receiver. If your extending the coax to your antenna you have to also factor in the loss of power over any given length and the type of coax used. I've never opened up a modem or WiFi antenna but a wave length at 5GHz is only 6 centimeters or 2.36 inches so those small antennas could be several wavelengths long to give them their gain.

 

[Endeavour]

Uhm, a couple of important facts that weren't mentioned on the review:

- Like its predecessors, this board has the CPU socket placed on a non-standard location: it is shifted up by a few centimeters. While this leaves a bigger gap with the GPU, it may cause incompatibilities with radiators or fans placed on the top of the case, or even coolers (for MSI ITX boards the Noctua NH-D15 fits better than the ITX specific NH-D15S)

- The power/reset/led connector is located near the back, which is also uncommon for ITX boards, and could be a problem with some cases with short cables.

 

[EarthDog]

While this leaves a bigger gap with the GPU, it may cause incompatibilities with radiators or fans placed on the top of the case, or even coolers (for MSI ITX boards the Noctua NH-D15 fits better than the ITX specific NH-D15S)

Isn't it like that on most ITX motherboards? The VRMs that normally are above the socket are, generally to the left only? I think you meant, millimeter, not centimeter? A few CM north is off the board, LOL.

The ASRock B850I Lightning is the same... Giga B850I...X870 Mini-ITX is similar. I don't know the exact measurements of each, but they all look shifted up a few mm.

This is, seemingly, an issue with most (all?) Mini-ITX boards, not this MSI exclusively.

- The power/reset/led connector is located near the back, which is also uncommon for ITX boards, and could be a problem with some cases with short cables.

If you can reach the front, you can reach the back in the same place. It's generally closer to the source of the cable on the back (depends on the case/orientation of course).

As long as it can't be used as an AP or exceed the WiFi transmit power limits where you live, yes.

Thank you. Glad we cleared that up... ROUTERS (which was not discussed, lol) it's not OK, Wifi, it is.

 

[Endeavour]

Isn't it like that on most ITX motherboards? The VRMs that normally are above the socket are, generally to the left only? I think you meant, millimeter, not centimeter? A few CM north is off the board, LOL.

Well, I didn’t want to write mm because you might get the impression it’s just a couple of mm, but it’s more like 10-15mm (1-1.5cm) IIRC, which inside a MiniITX case is A LOT, and could cause many compatibility problems.

As I said earlier, a Noctua NH-D15 fits on this MSI board with a decent gap to the GPU but on other ITX boards you can’t even install a GPU with a D15 in place (you need the asymmetric D15S for those), so it’s not just “a small margin of error”


About the cables and the header location: obviously depends on orientation etc, but some MiniITX cases are shipped with short power button cables that won’t reach the back of the case and may be too short to route to the place where this board has the connector.


Getting parts with the correct (compatible) sizes and measurements on an ITX build is like 50% of your build work, so these discrepancies are very important on any review of an ITX part.

 

[The Tech Guy]

About the cables and the header location: obviously depends on orientation etc, but some MiniITX cases are shipped with short power button cables that won’t reach the back of the case and may be too short to route to the place where this board has the connector.

The term Mini-ITX case has become far more expanded in size due to the size and slots needed for most consumer GPU's. This has caused problems for manufacturers of PSU's as to what lenght to supply the cables so they are compatible with all builds. Some so called Mini-ITX cases can use ATX some only SFX. True Mini-ITX cases (about shoe-box size) need good airflow to keep temps down and cable clutter does not help. Modular PSU's have helped but I personally now make my all own PSU cables using 18AWG silicone wire and sleeve them. They're very flexible and cut to the minimum length needed. All other cables like for my front floppy bay USB ports I cut to length and re pin or solder back. MSI have kept their board setup much the same so reusing the same cables on a new builds has made it an easy swap over.

 

[EarthDog]

Well, I didn’t want to write mm because you might get the impression it’s just a couple of mm, but it’s more like 10-15mm (1-1.5cm) IIRC, which inside a MiniITX case is A LOT, and could cause many compatibility problems.

Sure. My point was that this is a MiniITX problem, not an MSI problem.