This year, AMD and Intel have announced and released their next-gen desktop CPUs with the new Ryzen 9000 Series and Intel Core Ultra (Series 2). New processors mean new chipsets, in this case, Intel Z890 and AMD X870, and countless new motherboards hitting retail shelves as we close the year.
During a recent tour of MSI's impressive factory in Shenzhen, China, where we saw Intel Z890 motherboards being produced at a mind-boggling scale, we got to go hands-on with a few Intel Core Ultra 200 builds with MSI's new boards. New CPUs and new motherboards are always exciting, but when you throw in a brand-new, modern BIOS redesign - it all feels 'next-gen.'
MSI is calling its revamped, redesigned, and overhauled BIOS interface and UI the Click BIOS X system. We went hands-on with two systems: an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K CPU and MEG Z890 ACE motherboard and an Intel Core Ultra 5 245K CPU and MAG Z890 TOMAHAWK WIFI motherboard.
Outside of the visual overhaul, clean-looking design, and higher-resolution presentation with support for ultrawide displays, the big design goal with Click BIOS X was to make the most relevant and helpful information and settings easily accessible, and only one click away.
It's easily MSI's best BIOS interface to date and quite possibly the most intuitive of all the major motherboard players. The default EZ Mode clearly lays things out with CPU, DRAM, Storage, and Fan information on the right-hand side of the screen. The top view provides quick access to the CPU's 'Game Boost' mode, MSI's new NPU AI Boost for the Core Ultra NPUs, and the ability to cycle through different memory profiles.
On top of this, the 'EZ Config' section provides quick access to MSI Performance Presets for the CPU, which covers Intel's default or recommended settings for its new Core Ultra Arrow Lake chips, plus the various OC tunings and MSI presets to boost performance. Likewise, the company's new Memory Try It! feature (yes, that's what it's called) lets you switch between multiple XMP or EXPO profiles for memory - covering more timing and speed combinations that we've seen in a one-click memory OC mode.
Switching to Advanced View, the goal is the same: provide quick access to the motherboard's most popular and used features and settings. The new Click BIOS X offers more detailed hardware monitoring with the ability to create and fine-tune detailed fan curves on a graph.
There's more to Click BIOS X than its visual overhaul, from more control for overclockers to more features for those wanting one-click access to several features. One final thing worth mentioning for the reviewers and troubleshooters out there is that Click BIOS X finally includes screenshot functionality so you can take snaps of everything you see and do.
Click BIOS X is standard in all new Z890 boards from MSI and ships with multiple themes, including light and dark modes.