EFI

MSI's EFI hasn't gone through many changes, so if you're familiar with its Click BIOS 5, you'll easily find your way around. Some tweaks we've spotted are the ability to alter the source for the fan response curves in the hardware monitor, which can now select from multiple sources, making it a match for Gigabyte's class-leading fan control suite. Other than this, the key difference, particularly between it and Intel boards, is the AMD overclocking section under Advanced Options in the Settings menu. This provides access to the various additional Ryzen-related overclocking tools such as PBO and automatic overclocking as well as the DDR and Infinity Fabric frequencies. There are more options for PBO in the overclocking section, all of which you can see below.

Software

MSI has completely revamped its software, which now all comes under the Creator Centre banner - a new all-encompassing suite for fan control, overclocking, and RGB lighting. Overall it worked well, but it was a tad clunky. We couldn't seem to resize any of the windows, and initially we couldn't find any way of monitoring temperatures, fan speeds, or voltages in real time while headed into the separate tweaking pages. However, there is a pop-out window that can be toggled that shows this information. 

The trouble is, as you can't resize either window, you can't view both at the same time, because they overlap. However, the level of control is decent, and with the fans and you also get the ability to tweak that chipset fan from the comfort of the desktop too. The exception to the Creator Centre is the audio control. The Nahimic control centre that's paired with the Realtek audio is now obtained via the Microsoft store, and we should note that we had the full complement of drivers via MSI and the Nahimic software installed to reach our reported audio performance figures.