MSI MEG Z490 Ace Review

Written by Antony Leather

May 26, 2020 | 14:00

Tags: #10th-gen #comet-lake-s #lga1200 #z490

Companies: #asus #gigabyte #intel #msi

EFI

The EFI hasn't changed that much for a while with MSI, but the same clear, well-organised interface remains, making overclocking and getting around system settings and fan control very easy indeed. Our only complaint is that there's no external temperature input or way to control it in the fan section, which lags behind Gigabyte's equivalent boards, but then MSI's overall layout is better.


Software

Something that's no so clear is MSI's Dragon Centre software. It is highly fragmented as far as overclocking and fan control goes with options spread across numerous pages, making it very fiddly and clunky to use. The RGB lighting and fan control generally worked well, but overclocking less so. For starters, when we booted into Windows, we found our PC sat at 5GHz with a 1.29V overclock, despite us not having applied it. Thermals were also through the roof, hitting higher temperatures at stock speed than we did with our 5.1GHz manual overclock. We also couldn't change these settings either so for now, we'd suggest avoiding Dragon Centre until these issues are fixed. We've reached out to MSI for comment, as well.




Discuss this in the forums
YouTube logo
MSI MPG Velox 100R Chassis Review

October 14 2021 | 15:04