MSI MAG B860 Tomahawk Wi-Fi

[Combatus]

With a sub $200 price tag, the latest MSI B860 Tomahawk aims to give your Intel Core Ultra processor an affordable home while still offering cutting edge features. The Tomahawk has a solid reputation but can it deliver on B860 or should you point your wallet at the Z890 version?

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[TristanX]

I think M.2 SSD Gen5 slot should be tested with latest low power SSD like Samsung 9100 PRO or those with SM2508 or E31 controllers

 

[Chrispy_]

It's hard to get excited about anything on LGA1851 when it's a 1-generation platform and it's single generation of CPUs are duds with a disastrous launch and only now after months of continued patching do they no longer suck.

At this point, if it's a one-shot motherboard that has to support just a single CPU, why wouldn't you just buy a 13th Gen for less, or make the smart choice and go for AM5 which has a future and many more compelling options.

I don't want to hate on Arrow Lake too hard because it's situationally okay - but there's no room for poorly-priced, single-generation, underwhelming boards to go with the mediocre CPUs they support. B860 need to be a compelling $125-150 offering IMO, otherwise Raptor Lake just looks like the more attractive offering with plenty of affordable B760 boards and deep discounts on some great CPUs like the i7-14700K for 8P/12E or i5-14400F. Not only are those cheaper than their Arrow Lake equivalents, they're often faster, too.

 

[_roman_]

Nice Board.

It lacks 20Gbps USB ports on the io panel. It seems those cpu psu connectors are near the dimm slots which are more easy to access.

So we have Thunderbolt Mainboards and USB 4 Mainboards. Life will get more complicated to see the differences and which peripherals work on which port. Was it that hard to just use USB 4 on everything?

 

[NoLoihi]

I think M.2 SSD Gen5 slot should be tested with latest low power SSD like Samsung 9100 PRO or those with SM2508 or E31 controllers

I mean, that’s effectively “more data is always better”. I haven’t read reviews, but they’ll probably heat like typical gen 4? (So could publish gen 4 data as well, to substitute with.)

It's hard to get excited about anything on LGA1851 when it's a 1-generation platform and it's single generation of CPUs are duds

Not sure I should argue you on the one gen claim—there’s a lackluster refresh claimed, I think? You already admit they’re quite good for non-gaming-focused work.

So we have Thunderbolt Mainboards and USB 4 Mainboards. Life will get more complicated to see the differences and which peripherals work on which port. Was it that hard to just use USB 4 on everything?

TB4 is ahead of USB4.

 

[Chrispy_]

Not sure I should argue you on the one gen claim—there’s a lackluster refresh claimed, I think? You already admit they’re quite good for non-gaming-focused work.

Yeah, they're quite good, and that's the problem.

Raptor lake is also quite good for less money
AM5 is very good for the same money, but it also has a future that is likely to include 12-core chiplets and 24-core/48-thread Zen6 offerings. How's that 8 P-core Arrow Lake refresh looking?

If you're not gaming there the i7-265K is on par or slightly better than a 14700(K) but realistically the differences are pretty minor and a lot of the time Ryzen dominates the top results in the charts, even after the months of OS and microcode patches to Arrow Lake.

These days, if you're needing a fast CPU for work you are likely doing one of three things; AI, encoding, or rendering - and AM5 is much better overall in all three categories, even if Intel scores the occasional win in one or two tests. I'd be willing to give Arrow Lake more support if it was an improvement on the previous generation, but it really wasn't. It's merely an "okay" chip that's dissappointing even if it's not actually bad.

What Arrow Lake is, as far as I can tell, is a laptop processor that's been scaled up to be sold as a desktop processor too, but it simply fails to make a real case for itself at 200W and is just disappointing stagnation. It's no worse than the 13th/14th gen offerings but the one thing it brings to the table is lower power consumption, which is still higher than AM5, but it's a good step in the right direction for Intel.

IMO Arrow Lake the most sense in productivity laptops, I think the U5-235H and U7-255H are going to be incredible in the traditional 45W market that AMD are currently dominating, and 8 Arc Alchemist cores are going to provide enough grunt in an IGP to make even laptops without a dGPU capable all-rounders.

 

[AleXXX666]

B-series SHOULD be "less than $/EUR 200", lol. If you want "features", get the cheapest Z-board for ~200 money range. 250+ if you need "bling bling" or "POWWA for OC".
Anything OVER that is $$$-flush - note - for "consumer" market.
That' just my vision, I don't like to spend a lot for MB.