MSI MPG X870E Carbon Wi-Fi Motherboard Review

Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

It was surprising that AMD announced it would not launch motherboards with the X870E and X870 chipsets alongside Ryzen 9000 series CPUs. However, given the rocky launch of said CPUs, including lackluster gaming performance improvements and some necessary post-launch AGESA BIOS updates, perhaps the CPUs launched too early rather than the X870 motherboards being late.

X870 can be considered an incremental update. It uses the same AM5 socket as 600 series motherboards, and it carries over DDR5 memory support and PCIe 5.0 support for a next-gen graphics card and the latest SSDs. X870 is primarily a vehicle for introducing the latest technologies to the AM5 platform, including Wi-Fi 7 and USB4. Manufacturers have no doubt learned from first-generation X670 boards and used the opportunity to introduce tweaks.

Most X870 boards introduce a plethora of ease-of-use improvements. M.2 installation, in particular, has been addressed following years of complaints about fiddly SSD installation. Of course, you also get out-of-the-box support for Ryzen 9000 series CPUs.

We lead our coverage by reviewing the MSI MPG X870E Carbon Wi-Fi. It's an MPG-branded board, between MSI's more affordable MAG models and the more expensive MEG options. It's an upper mid-range option that offers almost all of the features you'd expect from a premium 2024/2025 motherboard without the exorbitant price tags of true flagship models. At $499, it's an expensive proposition, but it's priced at a point where you'll have to spend a lot more to get more.

At a high level, the X870E Carbon Wi-Fi includes a powerful VRM, dual PCIe 5.0 x16 slots, four memory slots, four M.2 slots, Wi-Fi 7, 5G, and 2.5G LAN, and a pair of USB 4 ports with a large amount of USB 3.x ports. The X870E Carbon Wi-Fi is seriously well-equipped if you value expansion potential.

The MSI MPG X870E Carbon Wi-Fi carries a recommended retail price of $499.

AMD Ryzen 9 9950X

	Today	Yesterday	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$714.84	$692.86	$623.28	$623.29	Buy
	-	-	$717.22	$623.29	Buy
* Prices last scanned on 10/4/2024 at 3:19 am CDT - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission from any sales.

Packaging, Accessories, and Overview

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The MSI MPG X870E Carbon Wi-Fi packaging features a pink and purple theme, with a conspicuous button battery warning on the front of the box. We can't say we've ever been tempted to eat parts of a motherboard, but these days, if you have kids around, it doesn't hurt to be aware of the damage these batteries can do.

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The rear of the box shows off the board's key features, along with a more comprehensive specification rundown and a look at the rear I/O-which is seriously packed! We'll get to that shortly.

The X870E Carbon Wi-Fi's accessories include everything you'd expect: A Wi-Fi 7 antenna, a pair of SATA cables, RGB cables, a small screwdriver, quick installation information, and some stickers.

There's something new, though. MSI has introduced a unique cable that combines the case power connectors, an ARGB header, and a fan header into one cable. MSI calls it EZConn, and it's an excellent little way to avoid some of the cable spaghetti that's usually inevitable when assembling your system.

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A bundled flash drive includes all the drivers and utilities needed to get started. You can install AIDA64, CPU-Z, and 7zip alongside the expected MSI utilities. And, if you really must install it, you can install the Norton 360 security suite with 60 days of free protection.

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Curiously, the motherboard manual doesn't appear among the files on the drive, though you can always download it from MSI's website.

Motherboard Overview

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The MSI MPG X870E Carbon Wi-Fi is an ATX offering with a generally understated, predominantly all-black look. Gone are the days of overly garish RGB overload, with just the MSI Dragon logo and the Carbon branding atop the primary M.2 heatsink featuring ARGB lighting. Alongside the aforementioned EZConn header, there are three more ARGB headers and a single RGB header, so the X870E Carbon Wi-Fi is well-equipped for those who really want to give their PC the full ARGB treatment.

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Other key headers, switches, and buttons include seven fan headers, power and reset buttons, and headers for up to four USB 2.0 ports, four USB 5Gbps ports, and a single Type-C 20Gbps port. The latter will be welcomed by folks who frequently connect devices such as phones and external SSDs.

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MSI surely knows a thing or two about next-generation graphics cards. The X870E Carbon Wi-Fi includes an optional 8-pin PCIe power connector, giving your system more juice should you shell out for a flagship graphics card or even two. Few boards come with this additional connector; notably, even MSI's affordable Pro series boards include it.

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Four DIMM slots support speeds of up to DDR5-8400+ in a dual-channel single-rank configuration. That's a good step up from the DDR5-7800 speed officially supported by the X670E Carbon, which is an example of the optimizations board makers have incorporated into X870 designs. In total, the board will support up to 256GB of memory.

Interestingly, MSI lists support for CUDIMMs, which could pave the way to DDR5-10000 and higher speeds.

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Storage-wise, the X870E Carbon Wi-Fi includes four M.2 slots, two of which support PCIe 5.0 drives. The other two slots are connected to the chipset and support PCIe 4.0. Four SATA ports join the four M.2 slots. The four slots all feature heatsinks, which are easy to remove and reattach.

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Even though one of the highlights of the Ryzen 9000 series is its power efficiency, the X870E Carbon Wi-Fi features a VRM that's even stronger than the X670E Carbon Wi-Fi. It includes an 18+2+1 phase VRM with 110A stages, so even if you want to thrash a Ryzen 9 9950X under liquid nitrogen, the board will handle it. We'll assume the board will support Zen 6 processors, too, and even if they take a dramatic upward leap in power consumption, the X870E Carbon Wi-Fi will easily handle them.

A beefy VRM requires beefy heatsinks. They are capable enough, but they don't quite have as much surface area as some competing boards in this price range and don't offer anywhere near the area of finned heatsinks.

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One of the highlights of the MSI MPG X870E Wi-Fi is its rear I/O. It's absolutely packed. We'll begin with the USB complement, which starts with dual USB4 Type-C ports, both of which support DP 1.4a. That'll give you triple monitor support with the included HDMI 2.1 port. The USB4 ports are joined by no less than ten 10Gbps ports, one of which is Type-C. If we were to be particularly harsh, a pair of USB 2.0 ports would be nice for basic things like a keyboard and mouse, but there's hardly any room to include them anyway.

There's a dual LAN comprising Realtek 8126 and 8125 5G and 2.5G controllers. These are joined by the soon-to-be ubiquitous Wi-Fi 7, which supports 320MHz connections and speeds of up to 5.8Gbps.

Next are the audio ports, which consist of 3.5mm line in and out ports and S/PDIF. These are driven by a Realtek ALC4080 codec. The X870E Carbon Wi-Fi adds some additional circuitry, including de-pop protection, a dedicated headphone amplifier, and high-quality capacitors.

Finally, we come to the bank of three buttons sitting plumb in the middle. These are a CMOS clear button and a BIOS flashback button, which will prove a godsend for those who wish to install a future-generation processor, particularly an upcoming Ryzen 9000X3D chip. The third button is the interesting one, though.

MSI calls it the Smart Button, and it can be programmed to do useful things like toggle the RGB on or off, reset the system in safe mode, or set the speed of all fans to full speed.

UEFI, Software and Test System

UEFI

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With the X870E Carbon Wi-Fi, MSI has introduced a new UEFI design. This is a huge change, considering MSI's UEFI design has remained mostly the same since the Z68 days with 2nd-generation Core CPUs.

Our first look at the new layout didn't raise any concerns. It's just a matter of getting used to it. It combines the simplicity of old-school BIOS layouts with a fresh design that's easy on the eye, with attractive fonts and contrast. The hardware monitoring page, in particular, is very well designed.

Test System

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X - Buy from Amazon
• GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X - Buy from Amazon
• RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Neo RGB 2x16GB DDR5-6000 CL30 - Buy from Amazon
• Cooler: Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL360 Flux - Buy from Amazon
• OS Storage: Teamgroup T-Force Z540 2TB - Buy from Amazon
• Power Supply: Super Flower Leadex Titanium 850W - Buy from Amazon
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro - Buy from Amazon

Benchmarks - Rendering and Encoding

Cinebench 2024

Cinebench 2024 is the latest version of Maxon's reliable and frequently used benchmark that measures single and multi-threaded performance. Note that all our benchmark testing used the latest available Windows updates and a BIOS that includes AGESA 1.2.0.2, which features improved inter-core latency for AMD Ryzen 9000 series processors.

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The X870E Carbon performed exactly as expected, with a result of 2,273 in the nT test and 138 in the 1T test.

Blender

A rendering application like Blender is just one of many reasons a user will consider a high-core-count CPU like a Ryzen 9 9950X. We use the Whitelands demo file and record how long it takes to render the image.

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The MSI returned the fastest result, but a difference of a second or two over seven minutes is well within a margin of error.

Handbrake

Handbrake is a simple-to-use video encoding and transcoding application. Here, we convert a 4K movie trailer to 1080p. The results below show the average FPS, where a higher result means the task will take less time to complete.

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The MSI falls in the middle of the tested boards.

Benchmarks - File Compression and Memory latency

7Zip

7Zip is a commonly used free file compression and decompression app. It's very sensitive to changes in memory speed and latency and scales with the number of CPU threads.

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The MSI again performed well here, returning the best result.

AIDA64 Memory Latency

Memory latency is an area that currently favors Intel. AMD's chiplet architecture and the Infinity Fabric link inevitably add some latency compared to Intel's monolithic chips. The real-world benefits aren't that important, though.

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The differences between the tested boards are within a margin of error. Even Windows doing something random in the background can affect the result.

Benchmarks - PCMark and 3DMark

PCMark 10 Productivity

We'd love to use our PCs purely for leisure, but some of us have to work, too! The PCMark 10 productivity test performs a series of tests using office productivity applications.

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Ultimately, all the test boards are within a tiny fraction of each other.

3DMark Storage

UL's newest 3DMark SSD Gaming Test is the most comprehensive SSD gaming test ever devised. It is superior to testing against games themselves because, as a trace, it is much more consistent than variations that will occur between runs of the actual game. This test is the same as running the actual game without the inconsistencies inherent in application testing.

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Interestingly, the X870E Carbon Wi-Fi was slightly behind the X670E Taichi here. Perhaps optimizing during the X870's pre-release stage was not a priority. We might see some improvement with future AGESA BIOS updates.

3DMark Time Spy Extreme

Time Spy Extreme is losing favor as a graphics benchmark in favor of Speed Way and Steel Nomad, but its CPU test is still a good measure of multi-core performance.

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It's another strong result for the MSI. Even if the differences are minor, it's better to be leading the pack than trailing it.

Benchmarks - Gaming

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is brutal on graphics cards, but when things like ray tracing are removed, it becomes more sensitive to CPU and memory performance differences.

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The RTX 4070 Ti Super, as used in our test system, is not the best for highlighting gaming performance differences, so the results between the tested boards are pretty close.

Horizon Zero Dawn

When using the 'favor performance' preset, Horizon Zero Dawn can achieve high frame rates with powerful graphics cards.

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The differences here are, again, minimal.

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition

Metro Exodus received an update that added improved DLSS support, enhanced ray tracing features, and variable rate shading, among other things. Still, with a powerful graphics card, it is affected by CPU and memory performance at 1080p, though less so with a card like the RTX 4070 Ti Super.

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All the tested motherboards performed essentially identically.

VRM and SSD Temperatures

These tests are performed to show off the differences between each motherboard's cooling assemblies. In the case of VRM testing, each board is subjected to a 20-minute Cinebench loop, while the SSD test records the peak temperature recorded during the lengthy 3DMark Storage test.

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The X870E Carbon Wi-Fi returned a result 8 degrees higher than the two ASRock boards in the VRM stress test. Still, a peak temperature reading of under 60 degrees is no cause for alarm, and it's likely attributed to its smaller heatsink surface area.

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It's a similar story to the SSD test. MSI's bundled primary M.2 cooler is notably smaller than some with boards in this price range. Again, there is no cause for alarm, but if you have a compact case with a gigantic heat-dumping GPU adjacent to it, you'll want to ensure your case has decent airflow.

Final Thoughts

MSI's MPG X870E Carbon Wi-Fi is packed with the features we'd expect of a motherboard that will power premium systems into 2025 and beyond. It's the kind of board that includes almost everything you'd want without the truly eye-watering prices of flagship boards like the MEG X870E Godlike.

At $499, it's an expensive board, but besides things like 10G Lan, an M.2 expansion card, or a fancy OLED screen, there's little to want. That's how motherboard makers justify those crazy flagship price tags!

The X870E Carbon Wi-Fi has many highlights. You get USB4 and Wi-Fi 7-which are found at cheaper price points - but add to that a whole load of USB expansion potential, a powerful VRM, and lots of ease-of-use functionality with an eye to the future, and it's more than capable of competing in its price range.

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It's not perfect, though. Besides the steep asking price, its heatsinks are a step behind some competitors. There's nothing to be alarmed about, but those Gen 5 SSDs can get really hot. With decent case airflow, you'll be fine.

MSI adds a useful software bundle, and its redesigned BIOS layout is easy on the eye and offers simple navigation.

If you've got the money to spend and want a board that will happily last you through several years of CPU and GPU upgrades. In that case, the MSI MPG Gaming Carbon Wi-Fi is a solid contender and belongs on the shortlist of anyone who balks at the asking prices of flagship motherboards.