Component Analysis

The PCH cooling is fairly basic, but there little need for anything more elaborate as you're not dealing with multiple chipsets like you would on an AMD X870E motherboard. The heatsink is plenty large enough even for extended heavy workloads and doesn't have any heat transfer between it and the nearby M.2 heatsinks either.


A common sight now on Intel Z890 motherboards even at this end of the scale is the Intel JHL9040R Thunderbolt 4 retimer, located near the Realtek RTS5453P USB-C controller, while a Genesys Logic GL3523 USB 3.0 controller sits next to the Wi-Fi module.


Not much has changed with audio, featuring a fairly typical Realtek ALC1220P audio codec nestled amongst audio capacitors in the isolated part of the PCB. Most boards only have two 3.5 mm mini jacks these days so if you have speakers that require more the board allows you to plug those into the front panel audio ports, although we'd imagine most in that situation would have a more elaborate audio solution anyway. The 5 Gbps Ethernet is provided by Intel's Killer E5000 controller.


The Wi-Fi 7 module is Intel's Killer BE1750x. Peeking inside there seemed to be lots of extra components that looked like they might offer extra cooling like we've seen elsewhere. However, it turned out to just be a plastic plate that sits over the top of the module.


Underneath is what looked like a thermal pad, but it just turned out to be a neoprene-like support. We had concerns initially that the module's antenna connectors weren't removable, but it seems MSI is concerned about these coming loose so as well as the protective cover, they also got the glue gun out to make sure.