MSI has finally released its highly anticipated MEG Z690 Godlike motherboard. It claims that this premium board deserves the title of "One Board to Rule Them All," with regard to Intel's Alder Lake platform. At this end of the market, with price seemingly no object, MSI had better deliver. The retail price of the MSI MEG Z690 Godlike is $2,099 and, as per our headline, it is claimed to be available now. However, you have to go through a registration process if you are interested.
Intel launched its unlocked 12th Gen Intel Core Processors in late October 2021, and MSI had some timely Z690 chipset motherboards available to carry the initial wave of enthusiasts. MSI then started to tease the sequel to last year's MSI MEG Z590 Godlike. We reported on multiple MSI MEG Godlike teasing campaigns through November and December, before the official launch of the product in mid-December at $2,099 (remember this is a motherboard bundle with MSI MEG CoreLiquid S360 AiO CPU cooler and 32GB Kingston Fury Beast DDR5 RAM kit).
In case you missed our previous coverage of the MSI MEG Z690 Godlike specs and features, the highlight of this E-ATX design (other than the shock price and limited edition sales strategy) might be the M-vision touch screen. This 3.5-inch IPS real-time monitoring screen resides near the DDR5 slots by default, but can be removed and used as a USB-C tethered remote control if preferred.
Other key specs [PDF] of the MEG Z690 Godlike motherboard are:
- 4 x Memory slots supporting DDR5-6666 RAM
- 1 x Lightning Gen 5 128Gbps M.2 slot
- 5 x M.2 PCIe slots (4 x Gen 4, 1 x Gen3)
- 2 x Thunderbolt 4 ports
- 2 x Lightning USB 20G ports
- 8 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports
- Dual LAN (Aquantia AQC113CS 10G LAN, Intel I225-V 2.5G LAN)
- Intel Wi-Fi 6E module, Bluetooth 5.2
- Direct 20+2 Phases with 105A Smart Power Stage power design
- Dual 8-pin power connectors with Core Boost technology
- 8 Layer Server Grade with 2oz Copper PCB
Please note that the MEG Z690 Godlike is a limited edition product from MSI. The PCs, accessories and components maker is offering a "prioritized qualification to those who purchased a previous generation of Godlike motherboard or an MSI RTX 3080 or 3090 series graphics card." In other words, it seeks to reward brand loyalty and previous Godlike owners with this product. You must reside in one of the following regions: PRC, JP, KR, AU, TW, AE, TH, VN, USA, DE, UK, ES, FR, RU, DK, FI, SE, or NO.
Now the MSI MEG Z690 Godlike is finally "available" those all-important reviews are going to emerge, so you can really see if you get what you pay for, and this latest generation Godlike lives up to its pedigree. We should also find out whether it can OC your Celeron G6900 to unheard of MHz.
