MSI MPG Z590 Carbon EK X Review: EK Waterblock Meets Gaming Carbon WiFi

MSI’s MPG Z590 Carbon EK X sets its sights on enthusiasts on a moderate budget, with an included monoblock, four M.2 sockets and robust power delivery.

Reviews
By
Published
MSI MPG Z590 Carbon EK X
Editor's Choice
(Image credit: © MSI)

Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

Software

For Z590, MSI has changed up its software offerings. We used to have several individual programs to adjust the system. But MSI has moved to an all-in-one application called MSI Center. The new Software is a central repository for many of the utilities (12) MSI offers. These include Mystic Light (RGB control), AI Cooling (adjust fan speeds), LAN Manager (control the NIC), Speed Up (for storage), Gaming Mode (auto-tune games), among several others (see the screenshots below for details). The User Scenario application has a couple of presets for system performance and is where you manually adjust settings, including CPU clock speeds and voltage, RAM timings, and more.

Overall, I like the move to a single application. The user interface is easy to read and get around in. However, sometimes loading these applications takes longer than I would like to see. To that end, MSI Center did an excellent job of pulling everything in.

Joe Shields
Joe Shields
Staff Writer, Components

Joe Shields is a staff writer at Tom’s Hardware. He reviews motherboards and PC components.