Board Layout

The MSI MPG X870E Carbon Wi-Fi is a very smart-looking motherboard and like many other X870E samples we've seen, the M.2 heatsinks are separated between a single PCIe Gen 5 slot at the top and several more M.2 ports below the primary x16 slot, with one enormous heatsink cooling three of them in this case. The RGB lighting isn't as extensive as that on the ASRock X870E Taichi, but there's more than on the ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Hero thanks to an elaborate M.2 heatsink. The rear of the PCB lacks a backplate which is unfortunate, as the cheaper ASRock boards include one. It would just help to protect the components here as well as providing extra cooling to the power phases from the rear.


If you're looking to transplant a bunch of hard disks then the four SATA ports may come up short, but they'll likely be enough for the majority of potential owners. There are also two USB 3.2 Gen 1 5 Gbps headers while the Type-C front panel header here is USB 3.2 Gen 2 20 Gbps and supports 27 W power delivery. As well as dual CPU 8-pin power connectors, there's a second 8-pin port at the base of the PCB for extra PCIe power. There are seven 4-pin fan headers in total, with the CPU header outputting up to 2 A/24 W, the five standard headers up to 1 A/12 W and the PUMP_SYS header up to 3 A/36 W. The two 2-pin connector to the left of SYS_FAN 5 is the thermistor header, which is useful for adding a temperature input to control fans, whether its in your case or a coolant probe for watercooling.


As you'd expect on a board of this caliber there are power and reset buttons and if you prefer the RGB lighting to be switched off manually, you can flick a switch next to these buttons too. Under the 24-pin ATX connector is the EZ Conn-connector. This essentially amalgamates a 4-pin fan header, 3-pin ARGB header and USB 2 header into one connector, with a proprietary cable included in the box that splits at the end into those three cables. This reduces cable clutter for your fans, pump and USB header if there is one.


If you want to daisy-chain a bunch of powerful fans or even connect a watercooling pump to any of the fan headers, it's best to do that from the 36 W PUMP_SYS header. It would be slightly unconventional, but you could even power DDC and D5 pumps from this header, it's good to see something powerful here as MSI has limited its fan headers to just 12 or 24 W in the past.


Similarly to ASRock and ASUS, MSI has its own version of a quick-release PCIe slot, and it's actually quite different to both. ASRock's was a simple slide mechanism, while ASUS has either a simple push to release mechanism or one that releases when you lift your graphics card at an angle out of the slot. The MSI implementation has a push to open and push to close on a single button. The manual says you need to leave the spring-loaded mechanism in the closed position to insert your graphics card so it locks in place, but you can just as easily secure your graphics card first and then close it. It's secure and fairly simple to use so long as you know whether its in the open or lock position, but that's fairly easy to see as the mechanism moves back and forward.


As well as the usual RGB lighting on the I/O shroud, the MSI MPG X870E Carbon Wi-Fi's M.2 heatsink also has an illuminated logo. As the heatsink is removable, MSI has had to add a two part connector for the lighting into the heatsink, the contacts touch once the heatsink is installed. It's a clever design that's been used in the past and looks great, but we can't help but wonder how much the extra components added to the cost of the board.


All four M.2 ports have ready thermal pads for both sides of the SSD, while the slots themselves require no tools to install the SSD or heatsinks unless you have something other than a 2280 size SSD. Another issue with the RGB lighting on the uppermost heatsink is that MSI can't use its EZ M.2 Clip II, instead requiring the slightly fiddlier pull around locking mechanism we've seen on boards for a while.


All methods work well, though, with the only issue being it can be a little tricky to align the heatsinks and to get them to lock into place. We also have concerns over the size of the upper heatsinks to handle PCIe Gen 5 SSDs, but you can check out our storage testing page for that. The upper slot and one below it are PCIe Gen 5 compatible, while the others top out at PCIe Gen 4.


The transition to Type-C is well underway on motherboards, with the count doubling here compared to the X670 version of this board, which also lacked USB4 support. Here there are four ports in total with two of those being the faster USB4 40 Gbps and the others USB 3.2 Gen 2 20 Gbps. There's an impressive nine USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports as well, just in case you were fretting about all those Type-C ports. As well as an HDMI port, you can also hook up a Type-C cable to your display as the two USB4 ports support DisplayPort outputs too.


We much prefer the new style of CMOS clear and Flashback buttons here and the smart button can be configured to various tasks in the EFI such as reset or toggling RGB lighting. As for networking we have both 2.5 Gbps and 5 Gbps Realtek Ethernet ports and Wi-Fi 7, while MSI has opted for Realtek's ALC4080 audio codec.