MSI MAG B850 Tomahawk Max Wi-Fi

[Combatus]

If you want the latest Wi-Fi standard, PCIe Gen 5 and decent VRM cooling for less than $250 then there's a decent amount of choice out there. MSI's Tomahawk boards have been solid choices in the past but has MSI cut too many features this time?

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[FreedomEclipse]

Having had first hand experience of MSIs shoddy SSD cooling prowess. Their whole NvMe system from the EZ M.2 clip to the way the heatsink screws in ontop of it s really really bad and doesnt take into account that some SSDs might not make good contact with the thermal pad that is already provided.

I had an issue where an SSD was regularly hitting what i think was 95'c when transferring files. I then put a 1mm or 1.5mm pad on the controller and thermals instantly dropped by 20-30'c

 

[vbq7qK68eyYAH4iR]

I wish motherboards didn't offer WiFi built in. I understand some/many/most people might find it handy but i don't need it and don't want the added cost. I wish i could get a high end board with no WiFi, no RGB and no crappy NVMe cooling plates. /rant.

 

[Chaitanya]

I wish motherboards didn't offer WiFi built in. I understand some/many/most people might find it handy but i don't need it and don't want the added cost. I wish i could get a high end board with no WiFi, no RGB and no crappy NVMe cooling plates. /rant.

Up until 400 series of boards(from AMD) many of these board makers were offering SKUs of their boards(mid range ones while high end and flagship almost always had wifi bundled) without wifi and one with wifi, I guess from inventory stand point it was cheaper from them to keep one with wifi so they stopped supplying non Wifi boards.

Edit: In cons there is a lack of 20Gbps USB port on rear panel, there are very few cases that come with 20Gbps USB C port on front IO so unless users are buying from pool of those 30 cases or so its a wasted connection.

 

[PLAfiller]

After having two Z-series MSI motherboards, my humble observations are: great value hardware wise, VRMs and stuff, but I got some remarks about their BIOS-es. Machines boots too fast, skipping some stuff, with or without "fast bios" enabled. Had to resort to PS/2 keyboard a few times to get into the BIOS as the 3-second hold power button wasn't on. They just leave me with something to be desired, I never had to do this with other brands I've switched. Also my AЕ-5 didn't want to work with my current MSI MB exactly due to fast skipping devices on boot, we will see if it will with Asrock. (could be the card itself, don't know yet).

 

[_roman_]

any bootloader and the windows recovery should be able to load the "firmware setup" = uefi = bios

am5 boots quite fast. I also had 10 seconds, later 7 seconds set to be able to use the uefi bootloader or just have enough time to load the uefi setup.

-- The board is far too expensive. It's a 100€ mainboard with shipping and tax in my point of view. The rear panel hardly have any usb-a ports, there are hardly any expansion ports. Looks worse than B550 with considering the standards have moved on.

Impressively the only lane sharing here is between the PCIe Gen 4 x16 slot and third M.2 port, with the former dropping from x4 to x2 if you use an SSD in that M.2 port. However, seeing as that M.2 port is limited to x2 rather x4, you probably don't want to be using it anyway.

the expansion slots and nvme slots of this board does not really make big sense.

Expansion Slots:	1x PCIe Gen 5 x16 slot (x16/x8/x4) 1x PCIe Gen 4 x16 slot (x4/x2) 1x PCIe Gen 3 x16 slot (x1)
Storage:	4x SATA 6 Gb/s 2x M.2 (PCIe Gen 5 x4) 1x M.2 (PCIe Gen 4 x4) 1x M.2 (PCIe Gen 4 x2)

People will buy it regardless because it's MSI or it has the higher 800 Number in the chipset as existing X670 or X670E or B650E boards.

 

[Nater]

Edit: In cons there is a lack of 20Gbps USB port on rear panel, there are very few cases that come with 20Gbps USB C port on front IO so unless users are buying from pool of those 30 cases or so its a wasted connection.

And I think most of those cases are from MSI themselves, so they do have that going for them. Having a high-speed USB-C PD port on the front of my case is one of my favorite things on my current rig, and made the Asus ProArt tax so worth it. I plug into other PC's now and it's a horrible let down.

 

[SSGBryan]

These types of boards are why I am still on AM4. I need PCIe slots & this simply isn't cutting it.

 

[odellus]

What is it about a motherboard that can have such a large effect on game performance? The spread between first and last on those charts is crazy big.

 

[Nater]

What is it about a motherboard that can have such a large effect on game performance? The spread between first and last on those charts is crazy big.

Especially when it seems the much slower boards cost 2-3 times more money. Look at Asus lagging behind.

 

[Contra]

I wish motherboards didn't offer WiFi built in. I understand some/many/most people might find it handy but i don't need it and don't want the added cost. I wish i could get a high end board with no WiFi, no RGB and no crappy NVMe cooling plates. /rant.

See biostar X670e, X870e and other

 

[vbq7qK68eyYAH4iR]

See biostar X670e, X870e and other

They do get nearer. The NVMe plates are essentially useless, since they’re so small and they still built in WIFI functionality, just didn’t include the 2230 card. I was looking for a board with no wifi included, in any capacity and the only heating is for the chipset. Let me us my custom coolers for NVMe. Removing the RGB, all the heatsinks and the wifi would lower a boards cost by at least $100usd, I’d imagine. The Asrock Lite boards, which just remove RGB, already come with a large cost saving.

 

[Sunny and 75]

If you want the latest Wi-Fi standard, PCIe Gen 5 and decent VRM cooling for less than $250 then there's a decent amount of choice out there. MSI's Tomahawk boards have been solid choices in the past but has MSI cut too many features this time?

Thank you @Combatus, great content as always!