Component Analysis

The PCH sits on its own under a standard size heatsink secured with four screws and there's no RGB lighting under here either. A small thermal pad is used to cool the PCH, which deals with a significant amount of I/O on the board.


The only lane sharing on the board exists between the 1x PCIe Gen 4 x1 slot and PCIe Gen 4 x16 slot (x4) at the southern end of the PCB, where the latter will drop to x2 if you use the former. Still, this does at least mean all M.2 ports can be occupied with no lane sharing, offering a maximum of one PCIe Gen 5 and two PCIE Gen 4 SSDs.


Perhaps one of the bigger disappointments is the use of Realtek's rather antiquated ALC897 codec, which is yet another step down from the Z890 models' ALC1220, even if the rest of the isolated audio components appear to be similar. Wired networking is the same as the Z890 model with Intel's Killer E5000 5 Gbps Ethernet controller.


Realtek's RTS5420 USB3.2 Gen2x1 Hub controller deals with the four Type-A ports on the rear I/O panel and is a familiar sight now even on boards at sub $250 prices. The MSI MAG B860 Tomahawk Wi-Fi has the Intel JHL9040R Thunderbolt 4 Retimer and its respective 40 Gbps Type-C port on the rear I/O panel.


The Wi-Fi 7 module is also Intel courtesy of the Killer BE1750x. This is removable by detaching the left VRM heatsink and removing two screws on the underside of the PCB. The module is secured to a metal frame and connectors held in place by a plastic shroud. These connectors feed back to MSI's EZ Antenna connectors.