With the new AMD Ryzen 3000 CPUs fully in their launch, motherboards are being announced left and right to be home to these chips. One of MSI’s latest boards appears to be a pretty sweet unit: the MEG X570 Unify.
So what makes this board so sweet? For starters, it’s got an all-black design and none of that RGB lighting that you pay for but don’t use. Abundance of hardware not considered; we’d almost dare call this board minimalist.
That’s indeed where the minimalism stops, though. MSI’s new X570 board comes with a plethora of heatsinks and even includes a fan in chipset heatsink for cooling the heart of the board, which MSI calls the Frozr Heatsink Design. The board also comes with three M.2 slots, each of which comes with its own ‘M.2 Shield Frozr’ heatsink. If cooling the NVMe SSDs isn’t something you care for, then perhaps you’ll be happy that these heatsinks will hide some of the non-black PCB’s some SSDs are made on.
The VRM circuitry on the board (which yes, also has two massive heatsinks connected with a heatpipe), comes in the form of a 12 + 2 + 1 circuitry design, and is fed by two 8-pin EPS power connectors. So, if you buy this board, do make sure you’ve got a power supply with two of these connectors. This circuitry helped TSAIK push a Ryzen 9 3900X to an impressive 5857 MHz, which is currently the top record for this chip registered on HWBot.
| Internal connectors: | |
| · 1x 24-pin ATX main power connector | · 1x TPM module connector |
| · 2x 8-pin ATX 12V power connectors | · 1x Clear CMOS jumper |
| · 4x SATA 6Gb/s connectors | · 1x Chassis Intrusion connector |
| · 2x USB 2.0 connectors (support additional 4 USB 2.0 ports) | · 1x Power button |
| · 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 connectors (support additional 4 USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports) | · 1x Reset button |
| · 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C Port | · 1x 4-pin RGB LED connector |
| · 1x 4-pin CPU fan connector | · 2x 3-pin RAINBOW LED connectors |
| · 5x 4-pin system fan connectors | · 1x 3-pin CORSAIR connector |
| · 1x 4-pin water-pump connector | · 1x 2-pin LED power input |
| · 1x 4-pin water-pump connector | · 1x Debug Code LED |
| · 2x System panel connectors | · 4x EZ Debug LEDs |
| Back Panel Ports | |
| · Clear CMOS Button | · Wi-Fi /Bluetooth Antenna Connectors |
| · PS/2 GAMING Device Port | · Realtek 2.5G LAN |
| · HD Audio Connectors | · Flash BIOS Button |
| · USB 2.0 Ports | · USB 3.2 Gen1 Ports |
| · USB 3.2 Gen2 Ports Type A+C | · USB 3.2 Gen2 Ports |
The motherboard is wrapped up with 2.5Gbe LAN and 801.11ax WiFi. Connectivity is also more than ample with 8 USB ports (two USB 2.0 Type-A, five USB 3.2 Type-A, and one USB 3.2 Type-C), multi-channel audio driven by a Realtek ALC1220 codec, and a PS/2 port. There are also connectors on the rear for the WiFi antennae as well as switches to clear and flash the BIOS.
So far, MSI has not revealed anything about pricing, only saying that it ‘offers the true value of the motherboard.’ Ignore that, regardless of cutting out RGB, the MSI MEG X570 Unify will still be a board for enthusiast users with an enthusiast price tag.
