Introduction

You can rarely go wrong when it comes to an MSI Tomahawk motherboard, and they've often performed especially well on AMD's B-series chipsets where they've handled 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.

So 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 too, something else we'll be considering is just what MSI has had to cut to get it below $300.

Specifications

Packaging and Contents

It's always useful to get drivers on a USB flash drive in case you don't have another device to grab them and installing Windows doesn't go to plan. There's also a magnetic Wi-Fi aerial, additional M.2 components for SSDs other than 2280 size, two SATA cables as well as a front panel header extension to make installing those case cables a little easier.



A unique addition is the 1 to 3 EZ Conn-Cable (V2). This splits a proprietary header into 3-pin ARGB, 4-pin PWM fan and USB 2.0 headers, which could be useful in cutting cable clutter, especially with RGB-enabled AIO liquid coolers.

The full list of accessories includes:

• 1x Quick start guide
• 1x Wi-Fi Antenna
• 2x SATA cables
• EZ M.2 Clip II Remover
• M.2 standoff screw
• USB drive
• 1 to 3 EZ Conn-Cable (V2)
• EZ Front Panel Cable