Power Consumption and Temperatures

MSI has a lot of different pieces here in play. The big ones here are of course the PCH and VRM heatsinks. The backplate offers a small amount of passive cooling due to a few thermal pads, but its main purpose is to strengthen the motherboard. When it comes to cooling the VRM power stages, MSI has a beefy heatsink with an elongated fin-stack for maximum heat dissipation. This does have some drawbacks, mainly this heatsink design requires more directed airflow in the general vicinity. It has less thermal mass, but is able to dissipate the buildup faster as well.




For the MSI MEG Z790 ACE thermal testing, one probe is placed along each bank of power stages. A probe is left out to log the ambient temperature. For temperature measurement, a Reed SD-947 4 channel Data Logging Thermometer is used, paired with four Omega Engineering SA1 self adhesive thermal couple probes. All temperatures are presented as Delta-T, which is the recorded temperature minus the ambient temperature as a base. The end result accounts for variation in ambient temperature, including changes over the course of a test.

Tests are conducted over a 30 minute period. For testing, the Intel i7 12700K is overclocked to 5 GHz at 1.35 V to reach 300~ Watts. Next is the Intel 13900K, used in a stock configuration. Tests include two runs; one with a fan placed on the VRM heatsinks to simulate case airflow and one without. If the heatsink has a internal fan, it is not disabled for these tests.


Prime95 continues to be a good candidate for maximum thermals and wattage output for VRM torture testing. However, this program isn't a realistic use-case for the average consumer. Depending on the BIOS configuration, the Intel 13900K can be equally power hungry (if not more) just in a stock configuration compared to a overclocked i7-12700K CPU setup.

We see here that without any sort of airflow, the power stages start to heat up surpassing 80°C near the end. This is still well within the acceptable range, and with any amount of case airflow, the temperatures will drastically drop to what may very be the best performance seen to date outside of using a CPU Monoblock instead.


Every motherboard is slightly different on how it handles a CPU in stock configuration. Here, even with an "unlimited" power target (PL1=4096 W), VRM temperatures are still very good. We can also see small dips as the CPU bounces off the set (Stock) 100 °C limit.


The last test here is the gaming scenario. This is an easy way to gauge what the VRM temperatures can be after extended periods of play. Similar to the Cinebench R23 load test, the temperatures never get out of control and can passively cool the power stages for an indefinite about of time if this motherboard is used strictly for gaming purposes. Once again, any amount of airflow will greatly lower the temperatures overall and it always recommended to have some amount of airflow within the computer case.