Storage Interfaces

Storage Performance

The MSI MEG Z790 ACE includes eight 10 Gbps USB 3.2 ports. This should be enough for a majority of users that are just looking for any USB ports, regardless of the rated speed. These are good for headphones, USB Audio DACs, web cameras, game controllers, keyboards and mice. Those who are looking for more have access to Thunderbolt 4 (40 Gbps) ports as well.

*ORICO USB4 NVMe Enclosure (ORICO-M208C3-U4) used for USB bandwidth tests.

DiskSpd (SATA 6 Gb/s)

DiskSpd (USB 3.2)

The external USB-C enclosure is rated for 40 Gb/s over USB4 or Thunderbolt 3/4. Due to a unknown reason, this enclosure no longer works with enabled Thunderbolt ports regardless of the motherboard. Unfortunately, this means the TB4 implementation of the Z790 ACE could not be tested at this time. Plugging it into the USB 3.2 (10 Gbps), we can see the read speed is also unusually low, when it should be peaking at 1000 MB/s.

*This will be updated when the replacement enclosure comes in.

DiskSpd (NVMe M.2)

For this test, the motherboard has all five M.2 NVMe drives installed simultaneously to simulate real world use while each drive is tested one at a time. The bandwidth of these M.2 sockets is in line with what's typical of these Gen 4 NVMe drives. Though, a peak of 7 GB/s has been observed on other motherboards. These are about 300 MB/s short of the target, but still quite good.