Monday, August 15th 2022
MSI Publishes its X670 Motherboard Product Pages
A bit late to the game compared to its competitors, MSI has finally published its product pages for three of its upcoming X670 and X670E motherboards. The three models are the MEG X670E ACE, the MPG X670E Carbon WiFi and the Pro X670-P WiFi. Earlier todaywe got a first hint with regards to the pricing of a couple of these boards and now we have most of the technical details with regards to the boards themselves. As with all other boardmakers, MSI hasn't revealed any information with regards to memory clocks and obviously no details about which CPUs will be supported. We already had a pretty good idea what to expect from these boards based on the details MSI released at Computex, but features like the power design weren't revealed at the time, nor did we get a very good look at the board.
The MEG X670E ACE appears to be MSI's high-end board for those that aren't interested in spending a small fortune on the Godlike board and it should cater to just about all needs. The board has a 22+2+1 phase power design and MSI is using a heatpipe as well as a stacked fin-array heatsink and a MOSFET backplate to help cool the oversized power circuitry. Other features include 10 Gbps Ethernet, although there is only one Ethernet interface, a DisplayPort 1.4 compatible USB-C 10 Gbps port (which was said to be DP 2.0 compliant at Computex), as well as two 20 Gbps USB-C ports around the back. USB4 is nowhere to be seen, but is most likely related to ASMedia being late to the game with its host controller. MSI has gone for a design where the x16 PCIe 5.0 lanes from the CPU are split between the first two PCIe x16 slots and the third slot is using four lanes of PCIe 5.0 from the CPU. The final four PCIe 5.0 lanes from the CPU are for one of the M.2 NVMe slots and the board has a further three M.2 PCIe 4.0 slots. On top of that, MSI also includes an M.2 Xpander-Z Gen5 Dual add-in card that can accept a further two PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD at the cost of eight PCIe lanes from the GPU.
The MPG X670E Carbon WiFi gets a slightly trimmed power regulation design with 18+2+1 phases and sadly loses the stacked fin-array heatsink, but does at least retain the heatpipe for the MOSFETS. MSI has also dropped the 10 Gbps Ethernet port in favour of a 2.5 Gbps port and the third PCIe x16 slot is only PCIe 4.0 on the Carbon. However, the Carbon gets two PCIe 5.0 M.2 NVMe slots onboard and has a further two PCIe 5.0 M.2 NVMe slots. IF you're looking at taking advantage of the expected integrated graphics in the upcoming Ryzen 7000-series CPUs, then this might be the board for you, as it has an HDMI 2.1 port, a DP 1.4 port and a USB-C port with DP 1.4 support. There's a second USB-C 20 Gbps port around the back as well. The MPG X670E Carbon WiFi looks like it should be a well rounded board for most people.
Finally the Pro X670-P WiFi gets a 14+2+1 power design and this time around MSI has dropped the heatpipe, although the company has still applied a rather large heatsink. MSI dropped most of the niceties on the Pro, as gone is the pre-attached I/O shield and not all M.2 slots come with heatsinks. Somewhat surprisingly, MSI includes a 20 Gbps USB-C port here and the display outputs are identical to the Carbon. This is the only board from MSI to offer up a PCIe 3.0 x1 expansion slot and as this is an X670 board, the three x16 slots are all PCIe 4.0, although the configuration is x16, x4 and x2, with none of the lanes being shared. The board has a single PCIe 5.0 M.2 NVMe slot and three PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe slots.
All three boards rely on eight-layer PCBs with two ounce copper layers. MSI has also included screwless M.2 drives installation on all boards, with the higher-end models also have screwless heatsinks on some of the M.2 slots. All three models also have a Realtek ALC408x USB audio codec, with the ACE gaining an ESS ES9280AQ DAC as well. Overall it looks like MSI is going to have a small, but pretty solid range of X670 and X670E motherboards.
Source:
MSI
The MEG X670E ACE appears to be MSI's high-end board for those that aren't interested in spending a small fortune on the Godlike board and it should cater to just about all needs. The board has a 22+2+1 phase power design and MSI is using a heatpipe as well as a stacked fin-array heatsink and a MOSFET backplate to help cool the oversized power circuitry. Other features include 10 Gbps Ethernet, although there is only one Ethernet interface, a DisplayPort 1.4 compatible USB-C 10 Gbps port (which was said to be DP 2.0 compliant at Computex), as well as two 20 Gbps USB-C ports around the back. USB4 is nowhere to be seen, but is most likely related to ASMedia being late to the game with its host controller. MSI has gone for a design where the x16 PCIe 5.0 lanes from the CPU are split between the first two PCIe x16 slots and the third slot is using four lanes of PCIe 5.0 from the CPU. The final four PCIe 5.0 lanes from the CPU are for one of the M.2 NVMe slots and the board has a further three M.2 PCIe 4.0 slots. On top of that, MSI also includes an M.2 Xpander-Z Gen5 Dual add-in card that can accept a further two PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD at the cost of eight PCIe lanes from the GPU.
40 Comments on MSI Publishes its X670 Motherboard Product Pages
Edit: so MSI hasnt implemented 40Gbps USB on products shown so far.
I just noticed there are no limit on DDR5 clocks.
Based on what I was told by Gigabyte, we'll see some sub US$300 X670 boards.Maybe not, this could indeed be a first.
I'd imagine all the added costs from everything else far outweighs the savings on this. LGA alone probably costs more than the savings from the cheaper chiset I'd like to see the BOM of an expensive mobo.
AMD doesn't list the price of anything...
Well, it's no different for Intel, as they require all the same things for their most recent motherboards. At least AMD gets to ride on discounts based on higher volume of materials and components already used for Z690 boards...
Expect the likes of Gigabyte and MSI to have a 20-25% margin on their higher-end motherboards, with Asus being around 30-35%.Nah, not at all. The basic B650 boards will have 8+2+1 power phase designs. The mid-range ones will be 12 or 14.
There will be some very affordable B650 launching early next year. Yes, they'll be quite feature stripped as well, but hey.
Nothing for $80-100 at launch, but sub $150 guaranteed unless the inflation has a severe knock-on effect.
If those chipset specs were correct then something like this should be possible even with B650(E):
x16 PCIe 5.0 (for GPU)
M.2 via x4 PCIe 5.0 (from CPU)
M.2 via x4 PCIe 4.0 (from B650)
USB 4 (from CPU via x4 PCIe 5.0)
2.5 GbE (via PCIe 3.0 from B650)
WiFi (via PCIe 3.0 from B650)
2x SATA (from B650)
(and a whole bunch of USB 2.0 / 3.2 Gen 2 & 2x2 incl. DP mode & type C)
And article says all 3 MBOs are 8 layer, so that means that x16 gen 5 traces don't need extra layers vs "just" gen 5 M.2
And yes, there will be something like what you're wishing for once they launch.
regarding DDR5 - MSI likes boasting high DDR5 support. That's not entirely surprising seeing how recent MSI memory support has been generally very good
High end B650E more expensive than low X670 seems normal, already happened with past generations.I too am hoping for a maxed out no bullshit B650E board (except for USB4, I don't care for that, give me a slot or m.2 and slot off of the chipset)
The only B series release i've heard tied to CES is the B760 series from intel
This seems to be partially due to Intel launching Z790 sometime in October/November.
I'm talking to the motherboard manufacturers.
The 10G Lan probably adds a bit to the price??