MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi: Basis in above-standard features

What it looks like in the BIOS

Two network adapters, over twenty USB ports, a really powerful VRM… in short, a motherboard for those with more demands than usual. The X870E Carbon WiFi is also rich in connectivity thanks to the two chips that make up the chipset’s south bridge. Overall, this makes it a very well equipped motherboard for the AMD AM5 platform that is more expensive, but you still don’t have to pay a devastating amount for it.

What it looks like in the BIOS

The UI of the MPG X870E Carbon WiFi has also undergone some visual transformation (like the MAG Z890 Tomahawk WiFi). The upper left quadrant includes toggle buttons for activating a memory profile (EXPO) or “Game boost” of the CPU. With it, the CPU cores are overclocked to higher clock speeds in game workloads where the CPU is typically not limited by power consumption. That is, of course, as long as those can be kept cool enough, which is not difficult with AMD Ryzen 9000 CPUs, even with more affordable coolers. Even when using the top model Ryzen 9950X with sixteen cores.

Then, within EZ Config, a few buttons have been added to quickly manage, for example, PBO or optimization for X3D Ryzens (X3D Gaming Mode). In EZ Mode there are also basic switches (on/off) for TPM, fan failure warning or RZ LED Control and so on. There’s lots there. And then to the right is basic diagnostics for CPU, RAM, storage and fans. Boot priorities are under the bottom navigation. I can’t help but conclude that the layout is logical and well intuitive. Valid for BIOS v 1.A17.

In EZ Mode, you may miss the Re-Sizable BAR management button a bit. You can only manage this technology via the Advanced Mode (which you can enter by pressing F7) in the PCIe Subsystem Settings tab. Relatively worse accessibility (if we consider the absence of it in EZ Mode as such) can probably be partially justified by the fact that most users do not turn off ReBAR. It is enabled in the factory settings. It only makes sense to turn it off if active ReBAR would degrade gaming or rather application performance. Such a situation can also eventually occur.

The advanced mode also opens the way to detailed PBO settings. In our tests, we measure the way the motherboard manufacturer sees it and then in the mode with the TDP reduced to 105 W, with the PPT at 142 W.

There are different ways to adjust the power limits. One is to manually adjust by entering the exact PPT values (and current limits) on the Precision Boost Overdrive tab. Then there’s also the Advanced CPU Configuration sub-tab in the Overclocking tab with preset TDP profiles in different levels (45, 65, 95, 105, 120 and 170W) or a third option – AMD CBS. Here you no longer enter the value in mW (as in the PBO settings), but in watts, i.e. three digits. For 105-watt TDP, it is 142 W (PPT).

      

The advanced overclocking settings also allow, of course, to adjust the clock speed by changing the multiplier. This is unlocked on AMD Ryzen 9000 processors, and the MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi motherboard allows you to adjust it.

The 9000 Ryzens as well as the 7000 Ryzens that can be fitted to this motherboard support, among other things, 512-bit vector instructions (you can see their impact in Handbrake in this test), which you can optionally disable. This may be, for example, to reduce power consumption in critical situations or for other reasons.

If you have not already enabled the memory profile (AMD EXPO) in EZ Mode, it can be enabled in Advanced Mode. And next to that, Infinity Fabric or Uncore bandwidth is also customizable. Its default setting (at least with the AMD Ryzen 9950X processor) is 3000 MHz.

   

The Hardware Monitor for fan management is also dressed in purple-black colors. Now it’s also possible to create curves by entering the exact values (degrees Celsius and DC voltages or PWM duty cycles) into a table, similar to what Gigabyte has had for a long time. This is more convenient than the drag and drop technique of dragging points directly on a two-dimensional graph.

Before you start creating the curve, it is worth paying attention to the settings of which temperature source the fan speeds will be based on. For example, the default CPU Core sensor (probably based on the hottest core?) can be switched to “MOS”, i.e. to some strategic point probably on the Vcore of the power delivery. Or you can leave the control on the CPU Core sensor, however you need it…

   

• Contents
• MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi in detail
• What it looks like in the BIOS
• Methodology: Performance tests
• Methodology: How we measure power draw
• Methodology: Temperature and clock speed measurements
• Test setup
• 3DMark
• Borderlands 3
• F1 2020
• Metro Exodus
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Total War Saga: Troy
• PCMark and Geekbench
• Web performance
• 3D rendering: Cinebench, Blender, ...
• Video 1/2: Adobe Premiere Pro
• Video 2/2: DaVinci Resolve Studio
• Graphics effects: Adobe After Effects
• Video encoding
• Audio encoding
• Photos: Adobe Photoshop, Affinity Photo, ...
• (De)compression
• (De)encryption
• Numerical computing
• Simulations
• Memory and cache tests
• M.2 (SSD) slots speed
• USB ports speed
• Ethernet speed
• Power draw without power limits
• Power draw with power limits
• Achieved CPU clock speed
• CPU temperature
• VRM temperature – thermal imaging of Vcore and SOC
• SSD temperature
• Chipset temperature (south bridge)
• Conclusion

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