MSI MEG Z590 Ace Motherboard Review: Premium Rocket Lake with TB4 and 4x M.2

Board Features

The MSI MEG Z590 Ace is a premium ATX motherboard that sits just below its flagship MEG Z590 Godlike model in the product stack and is aimed at content creators, gamers, and enthusiasts using Intel 11th Gen Rocket Lake processors. The Z590 chipset is also backward compatible with the previous 10th Generation Comet Lake processors. There are plenty of features, including two full-length PCIe 4.0 slots that can operate at x16 or x8/x8, with a third full-length PCIe 3.0 slot electronically locked to x4, and two PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. For storage, MSI includes a total of four M.2 slots, with one PCIe 4.0 x4, two PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA, and one PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot. There are also six SATA ports that feature support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays. In regards to memory support, there are a total of four slots that can support up to DDR4-5600, with a maximum capacity of up to 128 GB. Looking at cooling compatibility, the Ace has eight 4-pin headers in total including one dedicated to a CPU fan, one for water pump, and six for chassis fans.

The rear panel of the MSI MEG Z590 Ace has a wide variety of premium input and output, including dual Thunderbolt 4 Type-C with two mini-DisplayPort inputs, two USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, and two USB 2.0 ports. MSI also includes more USB capacity through front panel headers, including one USB 3.2 G2 Type-C (one header), two USB 3.2 G1 Type-A (one header), and four USB 2.0 (two headers) ports. Integrated audio is also impressive, with five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical powered by Realtek's latest ALC4082 HD audio codec and an ESS Sabre 9018Q2C DAC. For network connectivity, the Ace includes one Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE controller and the latest Intel AX210 Wi-Fi 6E CNVi, which also offers BT 5.2 connectivity. Users looking to use Intel's integrated graphics will find the HDMI 2.0b video output very useful.

Test Bed

With some of the nuances with Intel's Rocket Lake processors, our policy is to see if the system gives an automatic option to increase the power limits of the processor. If it does, we select the liquid cooling option. If it does not, we do not change the defaults. Adaptive Boost Technology is disabled by default.

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