Introduction

You can rarely go wrong when it comes to an MSI Tomahawk motherboard, they've often performed especially well on AMD's B-series chipsets, handling flagship CPUs without breaking a sweat. That was certainly true of the MAG B850 Tomahawk Wi-Fi Max we looked at recently, which picked up our Highly Recommended award. It's big brother, the MAG X870E Tomahawk Wi-Fi is on the test bench today so it will be interesting to see what the X870E chipset and $60 higher price tag brings to the table.


At just $300, the MAG X870E Tomahawk Wi-Fi is one of, if not the cheapest motherboard to offer the flagship Socket AM5 chipset. With that you get more PCIe lanes with less bandwidth sharing and an expectation of a certain standard of components when it comes to audio, networking and connectivity. It's certainly the cutting back of those features with the MAG B850 Tomahawk Wi-Fi Max that proved to be one of its negative points.

If you're planning on building a system with a motherboard at its heart that you don't plan on upgrading for three or four years, and don't want to be overtaken by new standards, spending a little more now for features such as Wi-Fi 7 or USB4 could be worth it. Given this is a very reasonably-priced X870E motherboard, something else we'll be considering is just what MSI has had to cut to get it below $300.

Specifications