Review on MSI MPG Z390 LGA1151 Motherboard by Steven Brouillard

For the first time in almost five years I've finished building a system and this board was the centerpiece. Paired with the i5-9600k and 2 x 8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 RAM it was a great experience. PROS: + Very detailed BIOS + Easy OC if you want a bit more speed but don't want to mess around with voltage and memory. terms individually. I enabled game acceleration and XMP and properly overclocked my RAM to 3000MHz and boosted my i5 to 4.4-4.6GHz. Of course, you could probably get a little more performance out of it by manually configuring everything and carefully applying trial and error, but I take 97% performance with 0% headaches every day of the week. + a pretty solid (printed!) guide that covers most board layouts and BIOS features + A COOL "board explorer" feature in the BIOS - you can hover over individual ports and see what the system is capable of physically connected to each port. + Attractive board - this black and red board looks good. In addition, the badge on the case is surprisingly stylish. Minuses: - there are no racks in a set! I know they usually come with a case and not a motherboard, but I wish mobile device manufacturers included at least six to eight simple stands to simplify the installation process. You're adding SATA cables, so why not use some brass standoffs? This doesn't detract from the quality of the board, so I'm not deducting a star for this observation. OTHER THOUGHTS: = I usually only use two brands for my motherboards - MSI and Gigabyte. None of them let me down (Knock Wood), but this is my second MSI board in a row with an excellent BIOS implementation. If this board lasts five years (like my last MSI board), then I'll probably be an MSI team for the rest of my (motherboard) life.