Review on High Performance MSI Z390-A PRO Motherboard for Intel 8th and 9th Gen with M.2 USB 3.1 Gen 2 DDR4 HDMI DP CFX Dual Gigabit LAN ATX Z390 Gaming by Stanislaw Koluch ᠌

Name: High Performance MSI Z390-A PRO Motherboard for Intel 8th and 9th Gen with M.2 USB 3.1 Gen 2 DDR4 HDMI DP CFX Dual Gigabit LAN ATX Z390 Gaming
Item: High Performance MSI Z390-A PRO Motherboard for Intel 8th and 9th Gen with M.2 USB 3.1 Gen 2 DDR4 HDMI DP CFX Dual Gigabit LAN ATX Z390 Gaming
Rating: 5

May 03, 2023

Everything in the product suited me, the price is generally perfect.

Not a bad solid mother, inexpensive and sufficient for almost all gaming tasks. I don’t know how the overclocking and warming up of the VRM will be with older processors like 8700K, 9700K, 9900K . but 9600kf mosfets calmly keep the temperature up to 65-70 degrees in stress tests. In games, everything is lower.
Memory quietly drives up to 4266 MHz, as in my case, this will be absolutely enough for games.

For all sorts of overclocking records - the mother will not work, for this there are other, more expensive (3-4 times more expensive) motherboards.

Pros

The store already had bios 1.90, dated May 2022. 9600kf was able to overclock immediately by 5 GHz at 1.35 V (in hwinfo it shows 1.36) ddr4 4500 MHz was able to load the XMP profile at 1.452V and SA / IO - 1.45 and 1.36V respectively. At the same time, the system was relatively stable (Windows loaded, the Aida test passed). I didn’t bother with long stress tests, I set 1.25V to SA / IO - the system loads 4266 MHz at 1.46V. It's so good for me. I'm testing next.

Cons

Relatively close location of the Pci-ex x16 slot for a video card. I have a video card with a massive CO and a large Arctic cooling Accelere Xtreme IV backplate heatsink. At the same time, True Spirit 140 processor cooling did not fit, we had to turn it 90 degrees around the axis.