Amazon.com: Customer reviews: MSI MPG Z390M Gaming Edge AC LGA1151 (Intel 8th and 9th Gen) M.2 USB 3.1 Gen 2 DDR4 HDMI DP Wi-Fi SLI CFX Micro ATX Z390 Gaming Motherboard

The Best Z390 mATX Motherboard on the Market!

Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2019

If you want to build using Intel's Z390 platform in an mATX form factor this is really the only motherboard to consider. The rest are missing features or options that are inexcusable oversights on a Z390 platform.

The MSI MPG Z390M Gaming Edge is well laid out and includes all the bells and whistles. A better audio chipset and audio ports than the other mATX offerings, built in Intel AC 9560 Wifi (Asus being the only other to include Wifi) and larger heatsinks on the components around the CPU (the ASRock is especially pathetic in this regard). It also has 3 case fan headers.

My build is:
* i7-9700k
* MSI MPG Z390M Gaming Edge
* Be Quiet Dark Rock Pro 4 CPU cooler
* Grizzly Kryonaut thermal paste
* Corsair LPX 32GB DDR4 3200Mhz RAM (CMK32GX4M2B3200C16)
* MSI RTX 2080 Duke GPU
* 1TB Samsung Evo 970 m.2 NVMe SSD
* Seasonic FOCUS Plus 850watt Platinum PSU (SSR-850PX)
* Fractal Design Mini C mATX Silent Case (no window)
* 4x Be Quiet Silentwings 3 PWM 120mm Case fans (BL066)
* 2x Be Quiet Silentwings 3 PWM 140mm Case fans (BL067)
* 2x DeepCool 1 to 4 Fan hubs.
* Dell 2716DGR 27" 1440p 144Hz G-Sync Monitor

I have the i7-9700k overclocked to 5Ghz, the GPU overclocked using OC Scanner on the cores and +1000Mhz on the RAM. I am scoring in the 11,400 range on 3d Mark Time Spy (places me in the top 100 of people using the 9700k + 1x RTX 2080).

The BIOS/UEFI MSI uses is intuitive, informative and looks pretty good. If you have not used an MSI board you should seek out some images or videos of their BIOS. The top displays things like temps, CPU and RAM speeds and boot device priority. They have a built in option to take screenshots (and store them to a USB stick) directly in the BIOS. They have ~10 profiles for storing various OC's/BIOs settings which is handy for switching between OC's for benchmarking, Gaming, everyday use and tweaking OC's without loosing previously working settings.

The typical settings are easy to work with, the OC settings are nicely laid out and the graphical Hardware monitoring section is awesome. It has graphs per fan (CPU, Pump, Chassis 1/2/3) and makes adjusting fan curves and settings easy.

Overall, its super stable. I have not seen any sign of issues related to the UEFI/BIOS. It just works.

Lastly, placement is important especially when dealing with smaller form factors. Mounting the CPU was pretty easy. The RAM slots are far enough away that even my massive cooler fit without issue. Ports and headers on the motherboard are in locations that can be easily reached and are not blocked by addin cards or the CPU cooler. I like that the 1st m.2 port is above the first PCIe slot (which would most likely and in my case has a GPU in it). This way its not just pumping out heat right under the GPU. The 2nd m.2 is at the lower end of the board leaving it out of the way in single GPU setups.

I like that they didn't situate the PCIe slots x16, 1x, 1x, x16 as well. If your planning on a dual GPU setup this might be a problem, but for me it meant that with a single GPU in, a 1x slot was still usable (which I am using an expansion card in). I also appreciate that they didn't put any headers around the 1st PCIe slot or in the middle of the board. No wires running over or across the GPU thanks to this.

Overall, this is the best quality and feature rich option for Z390 in an mATX form factor. The other 3 currently available options at this time all have compromises at best or are plain bad. Sure it costs a little more than the other options, but at roughly $175 its not really breaking the bank either.

I would highly recommend this board for those looking to build Z390 in an mATX form factor.

UPDATE (5/6/2019): I have been very happy with the board over the last few months. The only complaint I have is regarding BIOS updates. It appears that all modifications/customization are lost on update. Further, saved profiles are not compatible version to version. For some this may not be a big issue but I am using the fan curves, overclocking, secure boot, etc. and its all lost on update. Very frustrating. At this stage I have to snap a handful of pics of my settings before applying an update and then spend ~10 mins post update to reconfigure everything properly.

Otherwise its stable and works as needed.

46 people found this helpful

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L D

Feature packed

Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2019

Verified Purchase

This MoBo is fantastic. Easy to set up and easy to install, everything works as intended. A couple of the best features about this board is the EUFI and the build components. I have used other MoBo's and I keep migrating back to MSI products because of their ease of set up and features.

The EUFI is super easy to use, overclocking your RAM takes a couple clicks and is easy to find. The build components are solid, my fav is the armor around the GPU plug to eliminate sag. With the heavy Video Cards coming out, this is a really important feature. One thing to be aware of though, this MoBo has both a 4-pin and an 8-pin secondary power connector so be sure to get a 4-pin to 8-pin adapter for your power supply unless yours comes with 12 pins for the secondary power. Most of my power supplies only come with 2x 4-pins and this requires 3.

Also, I gotta say, I really love where they placed the PWM fan connectors on this board, they are spaced around the outer edge of the board in several places so connecting multiple fans to the MoBo is easy.

all in all, I am very happy with my purchase and would buy again. As long as this chipset is around when I buy another IO will definitely buy again for build quality and ease of use easily.

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Ronald H.

First MSI motherboard Ive built.

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2019

Verified Purchase

Ive always been a fan of the ASUS product line. Ive built ASUS motherboard home PCs for (20+) years....SO, i was reluctant to step outta my comfort zone and with the quality I was used to. Yes, Im come from the ASUS fandom realm.

I am not disappointed with this experince, at all.

In fact, it was one of the easiest builds I have done so far. Everything linked up as expected, new RTX2070 video card, New intel i5, new Coolermaster into an old Lian Li case with a very OLD asus sonar soundcard. Some hyper x (32 mb via x2 16 mb) mem, installed a cloned 860 sammy ssd, ran some cables, flipped a switch. PRESTO CHANGO!! It booted in 10 seconds and FLEW right into windows 10, with not some much as a hiccup. Never had to even go into bios. Im a happy camper and proud MSI motherboard builder. <<durr>>

A little about the Bios, very intuitive but simple layout. I am very impressed here with the different features and functions you have available for overclocking the CPU and the memory. The on board LED indicators are a nice feature to have in trouble shooting the system should that occur. Two m.2 expansion ports are great for future upgrades and system ramp ups for optane function. But the "MSI driver disc" is a waste of time. It never loaded. Just Download the software and the Bios updates from the website.

This little board is a solid performer and its simple to build.

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lisa m karabinus

Great motherboard

Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2019

Verified Purchase

I have gone with Asus products for the last 15 years and was looking to upgrade my old Asus w/Intel i5-2500k. I looked hard at the micro atx Tuf z390M-pro gaming Asus board, but but the reviews were just ok and the boar was hard to find in-stock for under $200. I finally chose the MSI MPG z390M Gaming Edge AC along with a i5-9400. It had all the features of the Asus board, better reviews and readily available at good prices. All I did was swap out the motherboard, processor and memory. I used my old case, power supply, drives. I also used my old m.2 Samsung 970 evo ssd, which I had on a pcie adapter board. I turned the power on and the computer, automatically set the bios and them booted straight into Windows 10 Pro without me having to do anything. Yea! I thought I would have to format the drive and start over with a fresh Windows install. This was the easiest upgrade I had ever done. This board has every feature I could want, including Intel wifi/Bluetooth and usb 3.1 gen 2. I even purchased a EZDIY-FAB 2-Port USB3.0 Type A + USB3.1 Type C GEN 2-3.5 Inch Front Panel USB Hub, so now have USB 3.0 type A and a USB 3.1 gen 2 type C ports on the front of my pc. I got the micro atx since I think it may eventually make its way into my old Home Theater case. So fart everything is working great. I still like Asus products, but the MSI board has made me think higher of MSI. Time will tell....

One person found this helpful

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ugaboy

Awesome motherboard! Software for it is a little buggy.

Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2020

Verified Purchase

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Love this motherboard. I'm knocking a star off for the MSI Mystic Lights plugin on the Dragon Center app which is used to control the RGB effects of the motherboard and any Mystic Lights supported components. The Mystic Lights control is a hit or miss for me. It should allow me to control the RGB lights on the following:

XPG Spectrix M.2 SSD
Teamforce Delta RGB SSDs
Thermaltake One RGB DDR4 DIMMs
Thermaltake G1 Ring RGB power supply
MSI RTX 2060 Super Gaming X GPU
Thermaltake fans and water pump

The RAM modules are only sometimes recognized as RGB devices in the Dragon Center. Sometimes they are there and available for me to customize, other times, they are missing which makes them stay in their default rainbow lighting effect. On some occasions, the RAM will be working with the Mystic Lights app, but only 2 of the DIMMs, slot 4 and 2. This happens after the Dragon Center app loads. When I first turn on the computer all 4 DIMMs are lit but after Windows loads and the Dragon Center app opens in the background and applies my customization, 2 of the DIMMs may stop lighting. Again, it's a hit or miss.

The XPG M.2 SSDs are not recognized at all. Not sure if this is a problem with the MSI app or with the SSDs but they only light up with their default rainbow effect.,I have not had the Mystic Light app ever recognize them. According to MSI and XPG, these SSDs are fully supported by the Mystic Lights Sync feature.
Everything else is controllable without a hitch.

The antenna jacks on the IO panel for the integrated WiFi module are easy to come loose from the housing of the WiFi adapter on the motherboard. I have one that has a lot of play in it. All I have ever hooked up to the jacks are the included antennas. The loose connection causes a myriad of problems. From the Intel driver resetting the module at seemingly random times, to loads of log entries about RX/TX queue failures. When this happens, Windows will report connection to the WiFi network, but every network request ends in a DNS lookup error or just a plain old timeout until I get to the back of the case and wiggle the antennas a bit. I finally gave up and just ran an Ethernet cable to my router.

I was able to pick this up for a steal of a price (a little over $100), had I paid full price ($200+), I would be disappointed.

One person found this helpful

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B. H.

Like every board for this size/socket, it makes compromises

Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2019

Verified Purchase

Good performance, stays within its thermal envelope on a single system fan, and has enough of the features I need.

The UEFI BIOS has a very custom, and frankly substandard, UI. Mine required an update to work. The version that came preinstalled was unable to boot from RAID arrays! However, I flashed a newer version and this problem immediately went away. Flash was very easy via a USB thumb drive.

Some tips I learned while shopping for this latest upgrade: If you have more than a couple peripherals, like SATA drives or add-on cards, finding the right motherboard takes a lot of research. It all boils down to one problem, namely limited PCI lanes. This is a fairly new and major constraint since the advent of NVMe. The limitations are also not simple specs that get listed. You have to familiarize yourself with the CPU you are purchasing. How many lanes does it have for direct access and how many are dedicated to the chipset/southbridge? Then you also need to familiarize yourself with the motherboard's block diagram. This diagram will tell you which slots are direct connect, and which ones run through the southbridge.

Only HEDT CPUs have more than 16 direct connect lanes. Motherboards have to divvy the direct lanes up between everything that benefits from low latency. 16 lanes will only support a single PCIe x16 slot. If your board has an additional x8 slot, it will switch the primary slot from x16 to x8 when both of these slots are occupied. Typically not too big of a problem, even 8 lanes is a lot of bandwidth. The real issue is NVMe. Storage latency is one of your biggest bottlenecks. That latency is notably reduced when your NVMe slot is directly connected to the CPU. However, each NVMe slot requires 4 lanes. Since all non-HEDT CPUs only have 16 of those lanes, it is extremely rare for them to put NVMe on direct connect. This board is a good example of that, the NVMe slots run through the southbridge and thus have latency similar to SATA. Whereas a HEDT motherboard will directly connect these slots to the CPU, like your GPU and RAM already are, and thus reduce latency.

If you can afford it, a HEDT CPU and motherboard is worth it. They have lanes to spare. You are more likely to find additional USB 3 Gen 2 slots, lower latency storage, and still have your GPU running at 16x. Even still, I'd look at the block diagram to be certain your purchase has divvied up the slots perfectly for your needs.

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Todd Osborne

So far I am very happy with this motherboard

Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2020

Verified Purchase

I've been using it less than a week, so I will update this review if anything changes. Initial impressions are excellent though. I received the board and installed it in a few minutes. Everything was clearly labeled and the instruction book was excellent, though I only used it for one wiring block diagram. Before I booted in Windows 10, I upgraded the BIOS to the latest and went through all the settings, tweaking a few things from defaults to what matched my system. I was replacing an ASRock motherboard and was hoping to keep my Windows installation on a Samsung NVME in tact, as well as a RAID1 array that I didn't want to have to restore from a backup. It worked out fine. Windows booted, recognized the upgraded, and the RAID drives were completely intact. I installed the drivers from the MSI web site and the computer is happily running great now. I moved my CPU (i7 8700k), Corsair memory, and nVidia 1050 Ti from my old system, no problems at all. I really like MSI's BIOS/UEFI. It is far more usable, friendly, and complete compared to my old ASRock motherboard. Very happy with this purchase.

One person found this helpful

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Wingnut

False advertising of audio features

Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2019

Verified Purchase

Building a new gaming rig and opted for the MSI Z390M MPG Gaming Edge AC over the Asus TUF-Z390M Pro Gaming because this model has an audio amplifier whereas the competitors do not.

Got the system built, installed Windows 10, NIC not automatically installed with Windows. Had to grab drivers using another computer and transfer them via USB memory stick as MSI still provides drivers on CD. Who still uses optical drives especially in gaming builds? Corsair keyboard and mouse would detect in iCue software until USB SCHT was disabled in the bios.

Got everything up and running, had to update Windows to most current build before MSI drivers would install.

Noticed the volume on my headset (Sennheiser PC350) was low. Similar problem I had on my old ASRock motherboard. Contacted support who flat out said this motherboard does NOT have an audio amplifier despite what their specs, advertising, and product information state. They also claimed my "audiophile grade" headset is not intended to be used on their motherboard. The Realtek chip autocorrect impedance of devices plugged in and it doesn't work at all. My headphones are 150 ohm impedance and the Realtek chip set impedance at nearly 2.5k ohm. There is no manual way to set impedance.

I offered them a chance to rectify this problem as they are blatantly advertising features that are not present and they basically said, "sorry you feel that way. Go away."

Here are messages from support:
***
Hello Wayne, that motherboard will have a better audio chipset than a standard motherboard but it does not have a built in amp.
***
Though the board features an "amplifier" and Realtek ALC1220 dac, it is intended for better audio for entry level and potentially lower impedance headphones. It is not intended for audio enthusiast grade headphones as I have had a similar experience with Sennheiser HD58s and Beyerdynamic DT990 Pros. The included utilities like Nahimic and Realtek are also not going to have the level of adjustment that would be for audio enthusiasts.
***
2019 I apologize that the audio solution on the motherboard did not meet your use case scenario and that you feel you were misled by the marketing. Unfortunately, nothing can be done in this situation and if you feel that you would like to go with a different motherboard, I completely understand.

16 people found this helpful

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RYTHMICRIOT

Have an 8th/9th gen Intel CPU, a micro atx case and want to overclock? Not many options.

Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2019

Verified Purchase

My current PC build is about 15 months old. I wanted something more compact this time around so I went with a mATX case. I got an i7 8700k but ended up getting a Asus B360 gaming motherboard as options were few at the time. This meant no overclocking in me despite having an unlocked CPU. I waited and waited hoping to eventually have a plethora of choices that would allow overclocking. 15 months later the options haven't improved much. So I picked up this MSI motherboard here on Amazon in excellent condition. The details said there was no manual but to my surprise everything was there. I'm now running at 4.9ghz with zero issues. Haven't tried to go beyond that yet. I'm using a thermaltake riing 280 AIO. This is a decent motherboard. It's not what I would call premium though. My biggest complaint is the wifi/bluetooth antenna connections are in the middle of the I/O so if you orient the antennas vertically they block a considerable portion of your I/O ports. Other than that everything seems to work fine. I like the bios better than my Asus board as well. The RGB lighting on this board is negligible and shouldn't be a factor in your purchase. It does however have 4 RGB headers (2 3pin, and 2 4pin) connectors which is excellent. Just remember, if you're going mATX then this board is your best bet.

2 people found this helpful

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Kurt R Connelly

Best mATX z390 motherboard available (as of December 2018)

Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2018

Verified Purchase

First off, Amazon had the best price available ($171.14 on November 20) and fulfillment was flawless. Great job Amazon!

As for MSI, They have not compromised on quality, layout design, or features. This is my first MSI mb, having come from an ASUS ROG I can say the build quality and features are very comparable and what you should expect from a higher-end consumer grade component.

Install and configuration was very simple and intuitive. I really like MSI's BIOS graphical interface! The included drivers and software are adequate. The support section on MSI's website was easy to navigate and I found what I needed to flash the BIOS to the latest version (there had been some enhancements for NVME since the release of z390 and MSI was one of the first to implement this).

I am a big proponent for mATX as long as there aren't too many compromises compared to their ATX board, And MSI certainly had this in mind. All you really lose here is a PCI-E x16 slot and a PCIe x1 slot (these days, what are you going to stuff in those anyway?). You still have 2 m.2 slots and room to SLI 2 graphics cards.
My biggest gripe, and it's a small one, could've used more USB C and USB 3.0 ports on the IO. Maybe they could've stacked the HDMI on top of the Display port and given us 2 more USB ports.

Overall great value and a solid choice for a modern PC build.

P.S. MSI's Assassin's Creed Odyssey promotion was easy to take advantage of. Installing the game as I write this.

8 people found this helpful

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