MSI today launched its first wave of Socket AM5 motherboards based on the new AMD X870E and AMD X870 chipsets, which come with drop-in support for the new Ryzen 9000 "Granite Ridge" processors, and new platform I/O. The company debuted products across its four key consumer motherboard brands—MEG, MPG, MAG, and PRO. Leading the pack is the flagship MEG X870E GODLIKE, followed by the performance segment MPG X870E Carbon WIFI, the mid-range MAG X870 Tomahawk WIFI, and the mainstream PRO X870-P WIFI.

The MEG X870E GODLIKE isn't just a flagship motherboard with no feature spared, but designed to be a piece of jewelry. It is shrouded almost entirely in heatsinks. Almost all its onboard I/O faces the front-end, including a 24-pin ATX, and two optional 8-pin PCIe power inputs. The two 8-pin EPS power inputs are exposed near the CPU socket area. A 27-phase VRM powers the CPU, with an active fan-heatsink solution that uses a series of aluminium fin-stack heatsinks with heat-pipes spreading heat among them. The CPU is wired to four DDR5 DIMM slots, supporting over DDR5-8000, with preparation for higher memory OC speeds that may come up in the future. Expansion slots include a PCI-Express 5.0 x16, a second x16 (electrical Gen 4), and a x4. There are four M.2 NVMe slots, three of these are Gen 5, and one Gen 4.The rear I/O of the MEG X870E GODLIKE is quite something—two 40 Gbps USB4 ports with DisplayPort passthrough, five 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 type-C, eight 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 type-A, sitting next to a bunch of other stuff. Networking connectivity includes a 10 GbE, a second 5 GbE, Wi-Fi 7, and Bluetooth 5.4. The board features a premium onboard audio solution with a Realtek ALC4082 CODEC, and discrete AMP. The motherboard comes with a fully integrated system onboard, called Dynamic Dashboard III, with its own 4-inch true-color LCD touchscreen. This lets you not just get realtime monitoring stats from the motherboard, but also troubleshoot it, flash its UEFI firmware, among others.

The EZ Control Hub is a breakaway module included in the box, which is meant to be tucked away behind the motherboard tray. A single cable runs between this module and the motherboard, and it puts out all the case-fan headers, ARGB headers, and water-flow sensor headers, so you don't have any pesky little cables seen on the front side of your build.

Next up, is the MPG X870E Carbon WIFI. This is a fairly feature-packed board with all the I/O the top X870E chipset provides, in a premium package. The board uses a simpler 21-phase CPU VRM that draws power from a pair of 8-pin EPS connectors. Besides these are the 24-pin ATX, there is an optional 8-pin PCIe power input which should come in handy if you've loaded the board with several Gen 5 SSDs or riser cards. Expansion slots include a couple of additional x16 slots (electrical Gen 4). The I/O is a touch watered-down from the GODLIKE—you still get two 40 Gbps USB4, but a fewer 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 type-C and type-A; and a set of 5 GbE + 2.5 GbE wired LAN interfaces. The WLAN setup is the same. The onboard audio solution uses an ALC4080.

The MAG X870 Tomahawk WIFI is based on the X870 chipset (8 fewer PCIe Gen 4 GPP lanes), yet has a formidable feature-set. Power is drawn from 24-pin ATX, two 8-pin EPS, with an optional 8-pin PCIe that stabilizes the 12 V domain. A simpler 17-phase VRM solution powers the processor. You still get four M.2 NVMe slots—two each Gen 5 and Gen 4. The I/O includes two 40 Gbps USB4 with DisplayPort passthrough, a single 5 GbE wired LAN, Wi-Fi 7 + Bluetooth 5.4, and a mid-range onboard audio solution that uses either an ALC4080 or ALC1200. The PRO X870-P WIFI is a mainstream board, with much simpler layout, a similer power delivery system to the Tomahawk, but with some feature-cutting done in areas such as gamer aesthetics, and I/O. You still get two USB4 and Wi-Fi 7, but the onboard audio solution is an entry-level ALC892.