Board Features, Test Bed and Setup
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Board Features
The MPG Z690 Carbon WIFI is a mid-ranged ATX motherboard that represents MSI's Performance Gaming series. As expected from a motherboard aimed at gamers, it has a relatively premium feature set that conforms to what other companies offer in the mid-range with their Z690 offerings. The MSI MPG Z690 Carbon WIFI has a good variety of storage options, including three PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2, one PCIe 4.0 x4/SATA M.2, and one PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA slot. For SATA, MSI includes a total of six SATA ports, four of which are driven by the chipset and support RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays, while the other two are powered by an ASMedia SATA controller.
In terms of PCIe support, the Z690 Carbon WIFI has three full-length PCIe slots in total, two of which support PCIe 5.0 x16/x0 and x8/x8, while the third slot is electronically locked to PCIe 3.0 x4. MSI also includes four memory slots with support for up to DDR5-6666 with 1DPC (1R), but broadly support is limited to DDR5-5600 with all the memory slots populated. The MPG Z690 Carbon WIFI can also accommodate up to 128 GB.
Focusing on cooling support, the MSI MPG Z690 Carbon WIFI has eight 4-pin cooling headers in total. These consist of one dedicated to a CPU fan, one dedicated to a water pump, and six dedicated to chassis fans.
| MSI MPG Z690 Carbon WIFI Motherboard | |||
| Warranty Period | 3 Years | ||
| Product Page | Link | ||
| Price (MSRP/Amazon) | $400/$350 | ||
| Size | ATX | ||
| CPU Interface | LGA1700 | ||
| Chipset | Intel Z690 | ||
| Memory Slots (DDR4) | Four DDR5 Supporting 128 GB Dual-Channel Up to DDR5-6666 | ||
| Video Outputs | 1 x HDMI 2.1 1 x DisplayPort 1.4 | ||
| Network Connectivity | 1 x Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE Intel AX211 Wi-Fi 6E | ||
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC4080 | ||
| PCIe Slots for Graphics (from CPU) | 2 x PCIe 5.0 x16 (x16/x0, x8/x8) | ||
| PCIe Slots for Other (from PCH) | 1 x PCIe 3.0 (x4) | ||
| Onboard SATA | Four, RAID 0/1/5/10 (Z690) Two, ASMedia ASM1061 | ||
| Onboard M.2 | 3 x PCIe 4.0 x4 1 x PCIe 4.0 x4/SATA 1 x PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA | ||
| Onboard U.2 | N/A | ||
| Thunderbolt 4 (40 Gbps) | N/A | ||
| USB 3.2 (20 Gbps) | 1 x USB Type-C (Rear panel) | ||
| USB 3.2 (10 Gbps) | 5 x USB Type-A (Rear panel) 1 x USB Type-C (One header) | ||
| USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) | 2 x USB Type-A (One header) | ||
| USB 2.0 | 4 x USB Type-A (Rear panel) 4 x USB Type-A (Two headers) | ||
| Power Connectors | 1 x 24-pin Motherboard 2 x 8-pin CPU | ||
| Fan Headers | 1 x 4-pin CPU 1 x 4-pin Water pump 6 x 4-pin Chassis | ||
| IO Panel | 2 x Antenna Ports (Intel) 1 x USB 3.2 G2x2 Type-C 5 x USB 3.2 G2 Type-A 4 x USB 2.0 Type-A 1 x RJ45 (Intel) 1 x HDMI 2.1 Output 1 x DisplayPort 1.4 Output 5 x 3.5 mm Audio jacks (Realtek) 1 x S/PDIF Optical output (Realtek) 1 x BIOS Flashback button | ||
The MPG Z690 Carbon WIFI is using many features of Intel's Z690 chipset including native support for USB 3.2 G2x2 Type-C which MSI includes one of these on the rear panel, along with a header for an additional USB 3.2 G2 Type-C port. Also on the rear panel are five USB 3.2 G2 Type-A and four USB 2.0 ports, as well as an HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 video output pairing for users planning on leveraging Intel's UHD graphics.
In regards to networking, MSI has opted for a mid-ranged Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE controller with an Intel AX211 Wi-Fi 6E CNVi providing both access to the 6 GHz band and support for BT 5.2 devices.
Test Bed
With some of the nuances with Intel's Alder Lake processors including the new P and E-cores, our policy is to see if the system gives an automatic option to increase the power limits of the processor. If it does, we select the liquid cooling option. If it does not, we do not change the defaults.
| Test Setup | |||
| Processor | Intel Core i9-12900K, 125 W, $589 8P + 8E Cores, 24 Threads 3.2 GHz (5.2 GHz P-Core Turbo) | ||
| Motherboard | MSI MPG Z690 Carbon WIFI (BIOS 7D30v14) | ||
| Cooling | ASUS ROG Ryujin II 360mm AIO | ||
| Power Supply | Corsair HX850 80Plus Platinum 850 W | ||
| Memory | Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR5-4800 CL 14-14-14-34 2T (2 x 16 GB) | ||
| Video Card | MSI GTX 1080 (1178/1279 Boost) | ||
| Hard Drive | Crucial MX300 1TB | ||
| Case | Corsair Crystal 680X | ||
| Operating System | Windows 10 Pro 64-bit: Build 21H2 | ||
We must also thank the following:
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