MSI MPG Z790 Carbon Wifi LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard

A great choice if you looking at getting into early high end MB. A full featured motherboard for Intel Alder Lake processors. RBG dragon looks awesome. Ample expansion slots, m.2 cooling and rgb controllers. Thunderbolt support for boot. A great MB overall

A Mastercraft of Motherboard Design!

I like futurproof motherboard designs everytime I build a new PC which is not often. Six years after building my last gaming/productivity PC, I decided to go with MSI after looking at the competition closely. This 13th generation motherboard checked all the boxes and slightly beat the ASUS board in value (imho). DDR5 memory, PCIe 5.0 slot, Gen 5 M.2, and Intel Wi-Fi 6E did it for me! Love this thing!

Fast

I am happy with the speed! With the i9 chip, my video exports are extremely fast. What used to take 1.25 hours on my old machine, I can do in 5 minutes.

Good - but update the BIOS

Overall a solid motherboard with a solid set of features. 5x m.2 slots (4 usable without stealing pcie lanes), solid wifi and more usb 3 ports than I can currently use stand out here. Overclocking on this board is solid. One very large caveat: If you are using an nvidia 30xx or 40xx card update your BIOS to 7D89v13 or later to resolve a very frustrating black screen on boot issue. If you have an nvidia card and are losing video or rebooting immediately after getting to the windows login screen - this is your problem. Also earlier versions of the bios had issues with sata ssds not being recognized and causing boot failures, this is fixed by v11 and later.

I am a sucker for MSI products

Having bought a Ventus 3X 3090, I decided to go with my first MSI motherboard on a new build, and I am very happy with it. From a design perspective, the MSI dragon on the heat sync is simple but effective; however, if you want more RGB or a white build, there are other options. There also feels to be plenty of room on the board itself; there is certainly no shortage of headers. The one thing I did struggle with is the fact that the 3090 extends far enough over the motherboard that it makes it difficult to reach the SATA drives connectors on the right side of the board when the card is installed. Simple installing the motherboard after standard SSDs makes that an easy fix. The new no-screws M.2 slot was a bit difficult to figure out (you have to push in on the metal ... MoreHaving bought a Ventus 3X 3090, I decided to go with my first MSI motherboard on a new build, and I am very happy with it. From a design perspective, the MSI dragon on the heat sync is simple but effective; however, if you want more RGB or a white build, there are other options. There also feels to be plenty of room on the board itself; there is certainly no shortage of headers. The one thing I did struggle with is the fact that the 3090 extends far enough over the motherboard that it makes it difficult to reach the SATA drives connectors on the right side of the board when the card is installed. Simple installing the motherboard after standard SSDs makes that an easy fix. The new no-screws M.2 slot was a bit difficult to figure out (you have to push in on the metal piece) to get it to pop, but it was very simple to use. One cool feature is once the system has booted into the OS, the Debug Code LED will show the current CPU temperature. Once you have installed the OS, be sure to have the Ethernet drivers and BIOS update handy a minimum. The board does come with a small USB to download them from the MSI site. Overall, I am very satisfied with this board, but I will say the Z690 version will most likely hit 90% of your needs at a much cheaper cost.

Overpriced but looks great and awesome Software

I am a bit of an MSI Fan-boy, I payed the extra price because of how much I love the MSI logo and matched the rest of my build. But what really was nice is MSI Center identified the board and every driver without me having to put any effort in. Since it's a new board, nothing was detected by Windows automatically with a fresh install of Windows. I had to reinstall windows 4 or 5 times because of GPU issues and MSI Center saved me a lot of hassle. If I wasn't a fan-boy I would have taken off a star because I did have to modify my 280mm AIO fans with a Dremel since the shroud for the IO is really big. That was only a minor inconvenience because I had the tools and was willing to modify.

Solid motherboard

No trouble at all bringing up this motherboard. Runs well - I do engineering work, not gaming so I can't comment on the kind performance gamers care about. Still, it's crunched through the tasks I've given it without complaint. I have CentOS 7 Linux running fine on it (software tools I use require an older distro, unfortunately). One gripe, though: MSI has a clever tool-less SSD retaining clip that they provide. Normally it works great as I have another MSI board in a different machine. Unfortunately, the factory installed one of them backwards on mine. I decided to break it off and secure one of my four SSDs another way (closest Micro Center store is an hour's drive from my house). Hopefully this was a one-in-a-1000 quality control error. All SSD's are working fine ... MoreNo trouble at all bringing up this motherboard. Runs well - I do engineering work, not gaming so I can't comment on the kind performance gamers care about. Still, it's crunched through the tasks I've given it without complaint. I have CentOS 7 Linux running fine on it (software tools I use require an older distro, unfortunately). One gripe, though: MSI has a clever tool-less SSD retaining clip that they provide. Normally it works great as I have another MSI board in a different machine. Unfortunately, the factory installed one of them backwards on mine. I decided to break it off and secure one of my four SSDs another way (closest Micro Center store is an hour's drive from my house). Hopefully this was a one-in-a-1000 quality control error. All SSD's are working fine - this was just a mechanical issue.

pricey but good

Works great no problems, lots of fan headers with a dedicated high amp pump header and lots of m2 slots. Unlike Gigabyte, the MSI rgb applet actually works.