Overclocking

Most people will be aiming for 5GHz with their shiny new Core i9-9900K, and we're glad to report that the MAG Z390 Tomahawk passed with flying colours, although it needed more tweaking than usual to get there with our particular Core i9-9900K and has clearly been through some significant BIOS changes since it landed going by its change log. We managed a stable run of our benchmarks at a rather high 1.3V, but below this we quickly ran into problems. In the end we needed to add some loadline calibration to get stable at lower voltages, so if you're fine-tuning your overclock with this board you'll likely need head into the DigitALL Power section in the EFI and locate the loadline calibration. You can read more about MSI's EFI and software on its Z390 boards here. 

Performance Analysis

Raw performance rarely shows any significant differences between boards, and indeed you'll be gaining nothing here by spending more compared to the MSI MAG Z390 Tomahawk, as it sat neatly in amongst the other results in tests such as HandBrake, Cinebench, and PCMark 10, offering nothing particularly slow or fast. The storage performance did reveal a slightly slower than average result on the M.2 read speed, which was 100MB/s slower than the next best result, but otherwise it keeps up with far more expensive offerings.

The audio performance of the ALC892 onboard sound was, as expected, rather poor, at least in what RightMark tells us, with the dynamic range and noise levels well off the the results we'd expect from the newer ALC1220 codec, but cutting back on audio performance to save cash seems to be a trend for MSI, as it did the same with the MPG Z390I Gaming Edge AC too.

You're not going to notice the difference unless you have an exceptional set of headphones or speakers and have a highly-tuned set of ears, plus you get the full complement of audio outputs including optical, so you can still power a hefty speaker system - something that can't be said for other implementations of this codec.

Power consumption was excellent too, and only the overclocked load draw was on the high side, largely thanks to the need for loadline calibration. 

Conclusion

Aesthetically, MSI MAG Z390 Tomahawk hits the nail on the head with a chunky, industrial design that stands out a little from the usual grey and black crowd without ditching its overall colour neutrality, and the I/O shroud and integrated I/O shield mean that it's almost a shame to have the board hidden inside a case. Overclocking requires a tad more tweaking than other boards we've tested, but it's less than 30 seconds work, and apart from lacklustre onboard audio that's unlikely to upset more than a tiny fraction of potential owners, the MAG Z390 Tomahawk ticks nearly every other box a £150 motherboard should. Combined with an excellent EFI and well designed PCB, the MSI MAG Z390 Tomahawk is easily deserving of our Recommended award, but with a couple of niggles it just falls short of Exceptional.