Check out the written article version of this motherboard overview here: www.alktech.co/articles/review-msi-mag-z790-tomahawk-max-wifi-lga1700-motherboard
after reading more in the board manual, download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/MAGZ790TOMAHAWKMAXWIFI_EN.pdf , page 29. They wrote: "PCI_E1 slot will run at PCIe 5.0 x8 mode when installing M.2 PCIe SSD in the M2_1 slot." but if the card is 4090 that is PCI Express 4 (not 5) and you install the M.2 in Slot 1, do it affect it the same? I think they means M.2 with Gen5, but if the M.2 is Gen4. does it work ok?
after doing some research I found that video for comparing "performance tests of the 4090 with PCIe 4.0 x16 vs PCIe 3.0 x16" (ua-cam.com/video/v2SuyiHs-O4/v-deo.html), meaning the PCIe 4.0 x8 is like PCIe 3.0 x16. so this video show you get 1-3% improvement between those versions if you drop to the "lower" version. I also checked the Asus ROG MAXIMUS Z790 DARK HERO and the other MSI MEG Z790 ACE MAX that are more than 2x the price and they have the same limitations. Look like the issue is with the Intel z790 chip, because it cross the boards.
@@nisimjoseph yup that's right, it's simply because the Z790 chipset doesn't have dedicated PCIe Gen 5 lanes for a M.2 drive, and Intel's given some leeway to motherboard manufacturers to decide if they wanna use some of the CPU's PCIe Gen 5 lanes originally meant for a graphics card for the purposes of enabling support for a PCIe Gen 5 M.2 slot!
@@thehimself4056 there's quite a number of them out there actually, especially for Intel B760 boards where Intel never intended PCIe Gen 5 support for M.2 drives. There are also plenty of Intel Z790 boards out there where the board manufacturer sticks with the standard 1x PCIe 5.0 x16 slot for a graphics card and multiple PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots kinda arrangement, some examples include the MSI PRO Z790-A MAX WIFI, if you're looking for a MSI board!
Just about to build a PC around this board. Stumbled on this video in my YT recommended feed. Great callout regarding M.2 slot 1. I'll be installing my 2x2TB WD SN850X drives into slots 3 and 4 rather than 1 and 2 like I originally planned. Thanks for that tip! Build will be in a Lian Li o11 Dynamic. 14900K, 64G 6000 CL30 RAM, 4070 Super, NZXT 360 AIO, full complement of SL V2 120mm fans, EVGA 1300 Supernova G2 (had a couple sitting in their boxes in my basement - used to drive Bitcoin mining hardware 10+ years ago). First PC I've put together in about 25 years. Mostly a workstation with some gaming. I went team green because a lot of the software I use benefits significantly from CUDA. Edit: question for you... do I need to flash the BIOS to latest version before installing the 14th gen CPU, or is this board going to recognize it with the installed BIOS out of the box?
Glad that this video helped! Just curious, what kinds of productivity workloads are you intending to use your PC for? That said, I highly doubt that you'll need to flash the board's BIOS, unless for some reason your retailer is sitting on very very early releases of the Tomahawk Max WIFI - I did notice that the first BIOS release available on MSI's website did not explicitly state support for 14th Gen yet. That said, even if this were to be the case, flashing the BIOS should be pretty straightforward too, given that the board does come with a Flash BIOS button that allows you to update the BIOS without needing to install a CPU/RAM/graphics card!
@@ALKtech just starting the build now. Thanks for the response about the board. Definitely not afraid to flash the BIOS - pretty easy to do. Was just curious if the 14th gen CPU was supported out of the box. I assume the stock is relatively new, but I guess I'll find out when I boot up for the first time :). As for workload, a lot of it will be astrophotography. I went with the 14900K because of the number of cores/threads and speed. Processing astrophotography uses as many cores and as much RAM as you can throw at it. I considered going with a Threadripper, but the cost of the CPU was prohibitive. A number of the processes I use in astrophotography also take advantage of the CUDA cores. Besides astrophotography, which is a hobby, my professional life includes development work. So, app servers, databases, microservices... Java, kafka, JMS, nodeJS, reactJS, angularJS, Spring... getting into ML. Having a machine that is capable of running everything, including one or more VMs, was also a key factor in picking my components. Oh, and I like to do some gaming. In addition to the productivity work it allows, having the 4070 Super lets me play pretty much everything I want at reasonably good frame rates, and potentially stream as well.
@@JonnyBravo0311 I use Pixinsight on a 7-year old i7 8700K machine and I am thinking about upgrading it to i7 14700K and this motherboard. I decided on i7 instead of i9 since I've read it runs a bit cooler and they are pretty equal performance wise (a few percent difference). It would be interesting to compare benchmarks once the builds are finished.
@@nikivan I was using PI on a 2019 MacBook Pro... core i9 16G. It's what I'm typing this reply on :). I was seriously considering staying with Apple, but the price of the upgrade just wasn't worth it. Comparable benchmarks to this system is the Studio M2 Ultra. That would cost me $4000 for the base model. Even refurbished I'd be looking at $3300. So, figured I'd build a PC. All in, my setup was about $2500. Build is done - tomorrow I'll do all the fun software installation and updates. Hopefully I'll be able to get a PI benchmark to compare against my MBP. Best I ever got from this laptop was about 11k. Looking forward to what this new PC brings to the table.
@@JonnyBravo0311 processing astrophotography's a pretty cool use case, not something heard about frequently at all! That said, the 14900K should handle your workloads with aplomb. And I guess you'll have some headroom too to upgrade to the next gen of graphics cards (probably on PCIe 5.0 by then) in the next one or two years. Enjoy the heck out of your new rig!
About to build my gaming pc on this board today, which m.2 slots should i use then? -1 Tb 980 pro for main drive -500gb wd black for silly games 2tb ssd for all other storage 14700k 3080 64gb ram
Thank you for making this overview, I've purchased one of these on preorder. Would it still be beneficial to use a 3rd party contact frame on this motherboard, or has the bending/temperature issue been addressed? I was also wondering which of the slots I should use for my NVME PCIe Gen 4 SSD, in order to avoid sharing lanes with the GPU.
Hope you found the video useful. If you've got the budget for it, go ahead and get a contact frame - as far as I know, I don't think there have been any conscious efforts to solve the bending issue with the stock processor retention mechanism...if you're going for a high-end processor (e.g. an i7 or i9), might as well just spend that few extra dollars for improved thermal performance! SSD slots wise, avoid using the first slot (M2_1), and pop your drive(s) into the second, third and fourth slots!
You should NEVER pre order anything! Wait for reviews your going to be upset when you find out that gigabyte motherboard's will give much higher ddr5 speed's
@@toonnut1 Considering that the board I ordered now has a 1-3 month wait, and Gigabyte's equivalent Z790 Aorus Elite X AX is priced $100 more where I live I feel happy about my purchase.
guys very important question! should i upgrade NOW 13/12/2023 (december) my old CPU: 6700k, MB: z270 gaming asus. DDR4 2x16gb. to 14900k, this motherboard from video, and ddr5 2x32gb OR i should wait for the next gen 15th cpu by intel with the new socket as everybody says?? thanks for the answer!
There's no real word yet on when Intel's next-gen Arrow Lake processors and platforms are going to arrive, it could be in the later part of 2024 or so. That said, it really all depends on your use case - if you find that you're unable to say, play the latest games at good framerates, or have issues with productivity workloads, getting a upgrade now would make sense for sure. IMO there's no real "good" time to upgrade especially since your PC is around 6-7 years old now and you'd definitely see a decent performance increase by upgrading to AMD's Ryzen 7000 series or Intel's 14th Gen! The next noteworthy hardware launch would be NVIDIA's RTX 4070/4080 SUPER line-up rumoured for Jan 2024 - you might wanna hold out till then to see how these new parts might perform, and you might even be able to snag a good deal on the non-SUPER GPUs that brands and retailers would want to clear stock of, and pull the trigger on a full upgrade then. My two cents!
Thanks for the video, I do have this mobo, the i7-14700K with an aio artic liquid freezer ii 360. All is working great but I just wanted to know if you do have some hints on overclocking this cpu on this motherboard?
I didn't get the chance to overclock with this board unfortunately - have you tried trawling through Reddit for advice? You might come across folks with the same board there who might have firsthand experience OCing with this board!
In summary, just make sure that you've got your Samsung SSDs installed in the second, third or fourth M.2 slots (M.2_2, M.2_3 or M.2_4) - installing a SSD in the first M.2 slot (M.2_1) will deprive your graphics card of some data transfer bandwidth!
To be honest, with the new green accents it looks uglier than the previous stealthy matt black Z790 Tomahawk. Very curious to see which RAM speeds to be doable fully stable on the new Tomahawk. On the current one 6800/7000 seems to be most if you want to pass y-cruncher VST/VT3 and HCI MemTestPro. I hope more main stream refresh motherboards will be able to achieve 7600+.
To each his or her own I guess, though I do think lime green might make it harder for folks to...colour code their PC build 🤔 But yes indeed, it'll be interesting to see how far the boundaries of DDR5 speeds can be pushed, especially with 14th Gen's IMCs...
Bro which motherboard should i choose for i5-13400F 1.MSI Pro B760M-A WIFI (DDR5) 2.MSI B760M Bomber WIFI (DDR5) 3.Gigabyte B760M DS3H AX (Wi-Fi) (DDR5) 4.Asus Prime B760M-A WIFI (DDR5) Tell me which is best for i5-13400f
I'd be more inclined towards the MSI PRO B760M-A WIFI - it has the best VRM setup of the lot. That said, a 13400F isn't a very power hungry processor, so any of the boards that you've listed should work equally well ...are there significant price differences between all boards where you're from?
I have a evga 3080 FTW3, and currently need use a WIFI PCI card. I want to get this board with when i buy a 14700k. But. from the looks of it, you wont even have access to that little x4 slot. If you have atleast a 3080, its going to be too thick from the looks of it. What is your take on this? Do you thinks theres room to fit 3080 and a wifi pci card i nthe little slot?
Mmm. The EVGA card seems to be 2.75 slots thick (at least according to EVGA's website), so you MIGHT just get lucky to be able to squeeze in a WIFI card into the x4 PCIe slot...though without actually trying out for myself, I can't say this with absolute confidence!
If plugging in an M.2 into the first slot reduces the first PCIE slot's bandwidth to PCIE 5x8, wouldn't this make effectively no difference for the current GPU lineup? PCIE Gen 5x8 delivers the 64GB/s of bandwidth, the same as PCIE 4x16, which is what current cards run at. Is this correct? I'm curious because I'm about to build on this board, and as I understand it that first slot is the one connected directly to the CPU, while the others are connected to the chipset, which leads to some performance loss on the drives.
If I'm not mistaken, the halving of bandwidth will still impact a PCIe 4.0 x16 graphics card's performance, as half the physical traces of the graphics card slot will not be in use, meaning to say, when you've got a PCIe 4.0 x16 card installed in the slot, it effectively operates at PCIe 4.0 x8 speeds (the slot will still step down from Gen 5 to Gen 4, seeing as there are no Gen 5 graphics cards on the market yet). Hope this clarifies!
Running a 4070ti need to upgrade my cpu ram and motherboard going to run the 17 14700k what motherboard would be best out of the msi z790 mag ddr5 or the msi z790 max
@@ALKtech yep i did it, thanks. Microcenter installed it in m_1 because i guess they didnt know so i had to take off the 4090 and put it in myself.. thanks
How's the price difference like between both boards? Is it significant? Personally, I'd find it difficult to choose between both boards, as they're quite evenly matched in terms of specs, though the MSI does come with WIFI 7 vs WIFI 6E on the Gigabyte board...
@@navid.jfrzadeh6074 I see. Since they're both the same price, aesthetics would probably play a part here too, seeing as the MSI doesn't come with onboard RGB LED accents unlike the Gigabyte (if you care for such things). I'd personally be more inclined towards the MSI seeing as it has WIFI 7 - my two cents!
Yup, though this board will be overkill for a 12400F. If you're not intending to upgrade to a higher-end 14th Gen CPU further down the road, you might want to consider getting a cheaper LGA1700 motherboard, perhaps something with the B760 chipset instead, and you could save yourself a fair bit of cash!
Hi I have recently built a pc using this motherboard and everything works but when I boot it up I don’t get any WiFi signals and only can turn on and off airplane mode is there a fix to this issue?
What's the fastest ram speed this mobo can handle with all 4 dimms filled? I know some mobos can handle the advertised speed but with only 2 dimms. I want to use all 4 dimms for aesthetic reasons and because why not use all 4 dimms if im paying for them.
According to MSI's specs sheet, speeds of up to 6400MHz+ are supported with four single rank modules, while four dual rank modules can run at speeds of up to 5600MHz+!
@@teo3ds oh, yours doesn't come with the sticker? There might be a very small chance that there are some early release motherboards that might have the first BIOS release that might not have full 14th Gen support - I can't confirm this, but even if this is the case, you can always load the latest BIOS using MSI's Flash BIOS button feature (which this board comes with)!
thank you for the informative video. I want to install Nvidia 4090 + 4 Samsung 990 Pro M.2 drives that will work in a RAID 0 (to be one big drive). but in your video you note, at 7:23 time, that if I install M.2 drive in the first M.2 slot near the GPU card slot, so the speed will drop from PCI X16 to X8. I don't want to get a drop from my 4090 GPU. so from what I understand here, I can't install x4 M.2 drives and I can use only 3. is all correct? please provide a link to this data, I am checking the spec/menual but I can't find this data.
Yes that's right, if you wanna ensure that your 4090 has access to the full 16 PCIe lanes, you'll have to install at most three M.2 drives, and avoid using the first M.2 slot (M.2_1). While the performance difference isn't that huge between PCIe 4.0 x16 and PCIe 4.0 x8, it's still something to note especially if you want maximum performance out of your 4090! This PCIe lane sharing point is covered on pages 29 and 30 of the MSI motherboard manual available from MSI's website. Hope this helps!
@@ALKtech Do we can reduce the PCIe bandwidth version speed in BIOS menu? Because I've ever seen the NZXT one has a capability to reduce the PCIe bandwidth in BIOS menu from 5.0 to 4.0 version. So maybe if it could, is it will run at 4.0 x16?
@@faristampan8251 I believe there should be an option to do so, though there's really no need to manually specify the PCIe slot speed, as the motherboard will detect the PCIe generation type and adjust the link speeds accordingly! E.g. if you have a PCIe 3.0 graphics card installed, the motherboard PCIe slot will simply operate at PCIe 3.0 speeds automatically - no need for any manual tweaking!
@@ALKtech Thanks. I’m a bit of a noob at PC building, but I was recommended that I install it in slot 1 because the 4080 is PCIe 4 and even PCIe 5 8x is the same speed as PCIe 4 16x? so it cancels out in some way? And the M.2 drive should be installed in the slot which is connected to the CPU directly which is only slot 1 on this board? As I say, really not sure about things since this is my first time building a PC from scratch. Am I throttling my GPU at the moment or will it only become a problem when the GPU is PCIe 5 itself?
@@Flame1500 it gets a little more complicated than that - basically the slot will operate at PCIe Gen 4 x8 speed instead, simply because your 4080 doesn't support Gen 5. You will lose some performance as a result, though going by some of the articles and videos out there, it might not be thaaaat much of a performance loss. Still, if you wanna maximise your 4080's performance, go on ahead to install the M.2 drive in the second M.2 slot instead, the performance difference between having a drive in Slot 1 vs Slot 2 (if any at all) should be minimal!
@@ALKtech I've one question, In my country this same mobo is available "MSI MAG Z790 TOMAHAWK MAX WIFI DDR5" but without the "Next Gen Ready" label on it. So, should I go for it?? Does these two mobo's makes any difference (one with label and without label)?? I don't know whether this version will be available in my country or not. Thanks for your reply.
@@Stud-d2h it's pure guesswork here, but I'd think the motherboards without the Next Gen Ready stickers may be older stock that do not have the latest 14th Gen-ready BIOSes on them. I could be wrong though, as MSI did release these boards in anticipation for 14th Gen's launch anyway. Are you buying this board from a physical retailer? If yes, I think they may be able to help you flash the board's BIOS to the latest revision if need be!
@@Stud-d2h and if you do need to update the BIOS, doing so without a CPU/RAM/graphics card installed is quite straightforward with the Flash BIOS button feature!
WIFI 7 is still a pretty new standard - you'll have to check if your internet source is hooked up to a WIFI 7-compliant router to enjoy any speed benefits!
This isn't next gen though, is it? Intel will change socket after this refresh and this motherboard will be obsolete. Is there any tangible advantage to upgrade from a z690 board to z790?
Next-gen being in reference to Raptor Lake Refresh that should be hitting the shelves sometime in mid-October 2023...15th Gen (or whatever else Intel might call it in the future) will be on a different processor socket, so yes, this board will be in that sense, obsolete by then! If you're already using a motherboard with the Z690 chipset, there's nearly no benefit from upgrading to Z790, as the differences between both chipsets are really minimal. Heck, you'd probably be able to drop in a Raptor Lake Refresh processor into your Z690 motherboard for an upgrade in any case - what Z690 board are you using at the moment?
@@ALKtech Yeah, that was about what I thought. The whole refresh thing throws me sometimes when people mention next generation, I usually think of different architectures. I'm still on AM4 currently, probably will go AM5 next upgrade and will wait to see what the x770 boards or b750 boards look like whether to go with one of those or a cheaper x670e or b650e board. Thanks for the response and have a good day!
@@richardsmith9615 totally get what you mean, especially since Raptor Lake Refresh wasn't supposed to have existed in the first place anyway...until Meteor Lake for desktops got canned. That said, what you've got in mind sounds like a good plan, you might even score yourself a good deal with X670E or B650E boards by the time AMD's 700-series chipsets hit the market. Cheers!
I was planning to buy this motherboard to pair with i7 14700k for a new PC I'll be assembling. Your comment made me reconsider that plan. If intel is going to change the socket next year, should I go for Ryzen build with an x670 motherboard? I believe Ryzen 8000 series will be supported by AMD..
@@wickedmetalhead Yeah, x670 will support Ryzen 8000 series. It is of course your decision and in terms of performance it looks as though the 14700k is very efficient, but yeah, if you want to keep upgrade paths then perhaps AM5 is a better option for you.
@@ALKtech Drivers for Windows 11 are not compatible for Windows 10, unfortunately. You need to look for drivers specifically for Windows 10. But this is a big problem, because most likely they are not available anywhere ((
Hey, @ALKtech I am currently in the middle of building a new pc, my cpu is i7-14700k, and I am currently searching for a good motherboard is MSI MAG Z790 TOMAHAWK MAX WIFI good enough for the i7-14700K such as the vrm its only 16+1+1 90amp and the 6 pcb layers?? Or should I purchase ASUS ROG Strix Z790-E Gaming WiFi which is around £140 more. Thank you.
Hmm, I'd personally go with the MSI in this instance, can't really justify the £140 increase in price for the ASUS board's specs, unless you're really all that into the ASUS's aesthetics. The MSI should be plenty of board for a 14700K - my two cents!
90 amp is not as high as I'd expect for a new tomahawk I'm definitely not going to upgrade my z690 tomahawk there's nothing special about this motherboard and the lime green is ugly. The gigabyte motherboard's are the way to go with this gen of motherboard's they offer higher ddr5 speeds and better value.
I personally have a Z690 motherboard for my Intel test rig, and have no intention of swapping it out for a Z790 or Z790 Refresh board too, seeing as the differences are really minimal - think perhaps faster DDR5 support, more USB 3.2 connectivity and so on. I'd think that folks who purchase Z790 Refresh boards would be those upgrading from a much older platform (perhaps 10th/11th Gen or earlier)..
@@ALKtech "much older platform (perhaps 10th/11th Gen or earlier)" . I'm upgrading from a 2nd gen sandy bridge :rofl: Thx a lot for providing the written article, easier to skim and to CTRL-F
@@rahpat01 oh wow 😂 my Ivy Bridge i3-3220 processor sits disused in a corner somewhere since its motherboard died many years ago...what specs are you going with for your new PC build?
@@ALKtechI considered an i7 gen 3 lol, but I'll go for a i7 14700k on MSI z790 tomahawk max / or edge max / or ASRock steel legend. I need those 8 SATA3 ports, I still have one old IDE disk & dvd to connect with an adapter 😂 My faithful i5 2500k and its ASRock Fatality mum will soon finally rest after 12 years+ of labor
ALKtech hi there, do you have any freezes after logging into windows?? i have some freeze 1-2 sec and in the system logs igccservice a timeout was reached (45000 milliseconds)..don't know what wrong with that...
Check out the written article version of this motherboard overview here: www.alktech.co/articles/review-msi-mag-z790-tomahawk-max-wifi-lga1700-motherboard
after reading more in the board manual, download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/MAGZ790TOMAHAWKMAXWIFI_EN.pdf , page 29.
They wrote: "PCI_E1 slot will run at PCIe 5.0 x8 mode when installing M.2 PCIe SSD in the M2_1 slot."
but if the card is 4090 that is PCI Express 4 (not 5) and you install the M.2 in Slot 1, do it affect it the same?
I think they means M.2 with Gen5, but if the M.2 is Gen4. does it work ok?
after doing some research I found that video for comparing "performance tests of the 4090 with PCIe 4.0 x16 vs PCIe 3.0 x16" (ua-cam.com/video/v2SuyiHs-O4/v-deo.html), meaning the PCIe 4.0 x8 is like PCIe 3.0 x16. so this video show you get 1-3% improvement between those versions if you drop to the "lower" version.
I also checked the Asus ROG MAXIMUS Z790 DARK HERO and the other MSI MEG Z790 ACE MAX that are more than 2x the price and they have the same limitations. Look like the issue is with the Intel z790 chip, because it cross the boards.
@@nisimjoseph yup that's right, it's simply because the Z790 chipset doesn't have dedicated PCIe Gen 5 lanes for a M.2 drive, and Intel's given some leeway to motherboard manufacturers to decide if they wanna use some of the CPU's PCIe Gen 5 lanes originally meant for a graphics card for the purposes of enabling support for a PCIe Gen 5 M.2 slot!
What budget boards are there for not cutting the PCIe slot in half?
@@thehimself4056 there's quite a number of them out there actually, especially for Intel B760 boards where Intel never intended PCIe Gen 5 support for M.2 drives. There are also plenty of Intel Z790 boards out there where the board manufacturer sticks with the standard 1x PCIe 5.0 x16 slot for a graphics card and multiple PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots kinda arrangement, some examples include the MSI PRO Z790-A MAX WIFI, if you're looking for a MSI board!
Just about to build a PC around this board. Stumbled on this video in my YT recommended feed. Great callout regarding M.2 slot 1. I'll be installing my 2x2TB WD SN850X drives into slots 3 and 4 rather than 1 and 2 like I originally planned. Thanks for that tip! Build will be in a Lian Li o11 Dynamic. 14900K, 64G 6000 CL30 RAM, 4070 Super, NZXT 360 AIO, full complement of SL V2 120mm fans, EVGA 1300 Supernova G2 (had a couple sitting in their boxes in my basement - used to drive Bitcoin mining hardware 10+ years ago). First PC I've put together in about 25 years. Mostly a workstation with some gaming. I went team green because a lot of the software I use benefits significantly from CUDA.
Edit: question for you... do I need to flash the BIOS to latest version before installing the 14th gen CPU, or is this board going to recognize it with the installed BIOS out of the box?
Glad that this video helped! Just curious, what kinds of productivity workloads are you intending to use your PC for?
That said, I highly doubt that you'll need to flash the board's BIOS, unless for some reason your retailer is sitting on very very early releases of the Tomahawk Max WIFI - I did notice that the first BIOS release available on MSI's website did not explicitly state support for 14th Gen yet. That said, even if this were to be the case, flashing the BIOS should be pretty straightforward too, given that the board does come with a Flash BIOS button that allows you to update the BIOS without needing to install a CPU/RAM/graphics card!
@@ALKtech just starting the build now. Thanks for the response about the board. Definitely not afraid to flash the BIOS - pretty easy to do. Was just curious if the 14th gen CPU was supported out of the box. I assume the stock is relatively new, but I guess I'll find out when I boot up for the first time :).
As for workload, a lot of it will be astrophotography. I went with the 14900K because of the number of cores/threads and speed. Processing astrophotography uses as many cores and as much RAM as you can throw at it. I considered going with a Threadripper, but the cost of the CPU was prohibitive. A number of the processes I use in astrophotography also take advantage of the CUDA cores.
Besides astrophotography, which is a hobby, my professional life includes development work. So, app servers, databases, microservices... Java, kafka, JMS, nodeJS, reactJS, angularJS, Spring... getting into ML. Having a machine that is capable of running everything, including one or more VMs, was also a key factor in picking my components.
Oh, and I like to do some gaming. In addition to the productivity work it allows, having the 4070 Super lets me play pretty much everything I want at reasonably good frame rates, and potentially stream as well.
@@JonnyBravo0311 I use Pixinsight on a 7-year old i7 8700K machine and I am thinking about upgrading it to i7 14700K and this motherboard. I decided on i7 instead of i9 since I've read it runs a bit cooler and they are pretty equal performance wise (a few percent difference). It would be interesting to compare benchmarks once the builds are finished.
@@nikivan I was using PI on a 2019 MacBook Pro... core i9 16G. It's what I'm typing this reply on :). I was seriously considering staying with Apple, but the price of the upgrade just wasn't worth it. Comparable benchmarks to this system is the Studio M2 Ultra. That would cost me $4000 for the base model. Even refurbished I'd be looking at $3300. So, figured I'd build a PC. All in, my setup was about $2500.
Build is done - tomorrow I'll do all the fun software installation and updates. Hopefully I'll be able to get a PI benchmark to compare against my MBP. Best I ever got from this laptop was about 11k. Looking forward to what this new PC brings to the table.
@@JonnyBravo0311 processing astrophotography's a pretty cool use case, not something heard about frequently at all! That said, the 14900K should handle your workloads with aplomb.
And I guess you'll have some headroom too to upgrade to the next gen of graphics cards (probably on PCIe 5.0 by then) in the next one or two years. Enjoy the heck out of your new rig!
Thanks for the video.
Does it support i7 or i9 14th generation ?
Yes it does - it supports, 12th, 13th and 14th Gen processors!
About to build my gaming pc on this board today, which m.2 slots should i use then?
-1 Tb 980 pro for main drive
-500gb wd black for silly games
2tb ssd for all other storage
14700k
3080
64gb ram
Install your M.2 drives in slots M2_2 onwards!
Since there are no pci gen 5 graphics cards it makes no difference if you install it on M2_1
Bought this board. It's great
Thank you for making this overview, I've purchased one of these on preorder.
Would it still be beneficial to use a 3rd party contact frame on this motherboard, or has the bending/temperature issue been addressed?
I was also wondering which of the slots I should use for my NVME PCIe Gen 4 SSD, in order to avoid sharing lanes with the GPU.
Hope you found the video useful. If you've got the budget for it, go ahead and get a contact frame - as far as I know, I don't think there have been any conscious efforts to solve the bending issue with the stock processor retention mechanism...if you're going for a high-end processor (e.g. an i7 or i9), might as well just spend that few extra dollars for improved thermal performance!
SSD slots wise, avoid using the first slot (M2_1), and pop your drive(s) into the second, third and fourth slots!
You should NEVER pre order anything! Wait for reviews your going to be upset when you find out that gigabyte motherboard's will give much higher ddr5 speed's
@@toonnut1 Considering that the board I ordered now has a 1-3 month wait, and Gigabyte's equivalent Z790 Aorus Elite X AX is priced $100 more where I live I feel happy about my purchase.
@eamonnpownall5216 if your happy I'm happy no worries 👍
guys very important question! should i upgrade NOW 13/12/2023 (december) my old CPU: 6700k, MB: z270 gaming asus. DDR4 2x16gb. to 14900k, this motherboard from video, and ddr5 2x32gb OR i should wait for the next gen 15th cpu by intel with the new socket as everybody says?? thanks for the answer!
There's no real word yet on when Intel's next-gen Arrow Lake processors and platforms are going to arrive, it could be in the later part of 2024 or so. That said, it really all depends on your use case - if you find that you're unable to say, play the latest games at good framerates, or have issues with productivity workloads, getting a upgrade now would make sense for sure. IMO there's no real "good" time to upgrade especially since your PC is around 6-7 years old now and you'd definitely see a decent performance increase by upgrading to AMD's Ryzen 7000 series or Intel's 14th Gen!
The next noteworthy hardware launch would be NVIDIA's RTX 4070/4080 SUPER line-up rumoured for Jan 2024 - you might wanna hold out till then to see how these new parts might perform, and you might even be able to snag a good deal on the non-SUPER GPUs that brands and retailers would want to clear stock of, and pull the trigger on a full upgrade then. My two cents!
If I put a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD( not Gen 5) in the first slot, will my graphics card bandwidth still be half
Yup - you should install your PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD in from the second slot onwards!
Thanks for the video, I do have this mobo, the i7-14700K with an aio artic liquid freezer ii 360. All is working great but I just wanted to know if you do have some hints on overclocking this cpu on this motherboard?
I didn't get the chance to overclock with this board unfortunately - have you tried trawling through Reddit for advice? You might come across folks with the same board there who might have firsthand experience OCing with this board!
Which board would be much better? I do not need RGB bling blinks
Really depends on what your budget is, and of course what processor you're considering to get. Do you have in mind some other motherboards already?
I don’t understand downgrade bandwidth, I have samsung 990 pro 4tp (2tbx2)
Is there any problem with slots
In summary, just make sure that you've got your Samsung SSDs installed in the second, third or fourth M.2 slots (M.2_2, M.2_3 or M.2_4) - installing a SSD in the first M.2 slot (M.2_1) will deprive your graphics card of some data transfer bandwidth!
@@ALKtechthanks
To be honest, with the new green accents it looks uglier than the previous stealthy matt black Z790 Tomahawk. Very curious to see which RAM speeds to be doable fully stable on the new Tomahawk. On the current one 6800/7000 seems to be most if you want to pass y-cruncher VST/VT3 and HCI MemTestPro. I hope more main stream refresh motherboards will be able to achieve 7600+.
To each his or her own I guess, though I do think lime green might make it harder for folks to...colour code their PC build 🤔 But yes indeed, it'll be interesting to see how far the boundaries of DDR5 speeds can be pushed, especially with 14th Gen's IMCs...
Agreed, the accents are ugly
Bro which motherboard should i choose for i5-13400F
1.MSI Pro B760M-A WIFI (DDR5)
2.MSI B760M Bomber WIFI (DDR5)
3.Gigabyte B760M DS3H AX (Wi-Fi) (DDR5)
4.Asus Prime B760M-A WIFI (DDR5)
Tell me which is best for i5-13400f
I'd be more inclined towards the MSI PRO B760M-A WIFI - it has the best VRM setup of the lot. That said, a 13400F isn't a very power hungry processor, so any of the boards that you've listed should work equally well ...are there significant price differences between all boards where you're from?
@@ALKtech I am from India
@@NajiSibin thanks
I have a evga 3080 FTW3, and currently need use a WIFI PCI card. I want to get this board with when i buy a 14700k. But. from the looks of it, you wont even have access to that little x4 slot. If you have atleast a 3080, its going to be too thick from the looks of it. What is your take on this? Do you thinks theres room to fit 3080 and a wifi pci card i nthe little slot?
Mmm. The EVGA card seems to be 2.75 slots thick (at least according to EVGA's website), so you MIGHT just get lucky to be able to squeeze in a WIFI card into the x4 PCIe slot...though without actually trying out for myself, I can't say this with absolute confidence!
If plugging in an M.2 into the first slot reduces the first PCIE slot's bandwidth to PCIE 5x8, wouldn't this make effectively no difference for the current GPU lineup? PCIE Gen 5x8 delivers the 64GB/s of bandwidth, the same as PCIE 4x16, which is what current cards run at. Is this correct?
I'm curious because I'm about to build on this board, and as I understand it that first slot is the one connected directly to the CPU, while the others are connected to the chipset, which leads to some performance loss on the drives.
If I'm not mistaken, the halving of bandwidth will still impact a PCIe 4.0 x16 graphics card's performance, as half the physical traces of the graphics card slot will not be in use, meaning to say, when you've got a PCIe 4.0 x16 card installed in the slot, it effectively operates at PCIe 4.0 x8 speeds (the slot will still step down from Gen 5 to Gen 4, seeing as there are no Gen 5 graphics cards on the market yet). Hope this clarifies!
hi all...how to use the flash BIOS button to update to the latest microcode 0x129....? thanks thanks
Hey there, this MSI article on how to use the Flash BIOS button might be helpful: www.msi.com/support/technical_details/MB_Flash_BIOS_Button
@@ALKtech oh thanks alot...but the link only illustrated flash aka reset bios, not flash/update to latest version right?
Hello, they say that this board is not suitable for overclocking flagship processors, what motherboard should I get at the same price?
its good for the mid range, i got a 13600k and run it 24/7;365 allday@ 5.5ghz and its very cool and very fast super easy to overclock.
Running a 4070ti need to upgrade my cpu ram and motherboard going to run the 17 14700k what motherboard would be best out of the msi z790 mag ddr5 or the msi z790 max
MSI has several Z790 models in its line-up - do you have the exact model names of the other boards that you're considering?
I have i9-14900k and 4090 with this board, which slot for the m2?
Install your M.2 drive from the second slot (M.2_2) onwards!
@@ALKtech yep i did it, thanks. Microcenter installed it in m_1 because i guess they didnt know so i had to take off the 4090 and put it in myself.. thanks
Which one do you recommend between this and aorus elite ax ?
And im looking into some overclocking
How's the price difference like between both boards? Is it significant? Personally, I'd find it difficult to choose between both boards, as they're quite evenly matched in terms of specs, though the MSI does come with WIFI 7 vs WIFI 6E on the Gigabyte board...
@@ALKtech both are same price
@@navid.jfrzadeh6074 I see. Since they're both the same price, aesthetics would probably play a part here too, seeing as the MSI doesn't come with onboard RGB LED accents unlike the Gigabyte (if you care for such things). I'd personally be more inclined towards the MSI seeing as it has WIFI 7 - my two cents!
Is the i5 12400f capable of that motherboard?
Yup, though this board will be overkill for a 12400F. If you're not intending to upgrade to a higher-end 14th Gen CPU further down the road, you might want to consider getting a cheaper LGA1700 motherboard, perhaps something with the B760 chipset instead, and you could save yourself a fair bit of cash!
im planning to buy this motherboard can u tell me can this mobo handle 2 rams of 7200mhz or which max mhz it supports when i have 2 installed
You might wanna check MSI's QVL list for this: www.msi.com/Motherboard/MAG-Z790-TOMAHAWK-MAX-WIFI/support#mem
how much storage is in that thumb drive?
...good question. I didn't plug in the drive to check how much capacity it has 😅
Hi I have recently built a pc using this motherboard and everything works but when I boot it up I don’t get any WiFi signals and only can turn on and off airplane mode is there a fix to this issue?
Is the WIFI adapter detected within Windows Device Manager? Have you installed the latest WIFI drivers as well?
What's the fastest ram speed this mobo can handle with all 4 dimms filled? I know some mobos can handle the advertised speed but with only 2 dimms. I want to use all 4 dimms for aesthetic reasons and because why not use all 4 dimms if im paying for them.
According to MSI's specs sheet, speeds of up to 6400MHz+ are supported with four single rank modules, while four dual rank modules can run at speeds of up to 5600MHz+!
Do I need to update the BIOS on this motherboard to get the i7-14700k processor to work?
Nope, this board should come with a BIOS that already supports 14th Gen out-of-the-box!
@@ALKtech even if I haven't the sticker with "next gen cpu ready" written?
@@teo3ds oh, yours doesn't come with the sticker? There might be a very small chance that there are some early release motherboards that might have the first BIOS release that might not have full 14th Gen support - I can't confirm this, but even if this is the case, you can always load the latest BIOS using MSI's Flash BIOS button feature (which this board comes with)!
thank you for the informative video.
I want to install Nvidia 4090 + 4 Samsung 990 Pro M.2 drives that will work in a RAID 0 (to be one big drive). but in your video you note, at 7:23 time, that if I install M.2 drive in the first M.2 slot near the GPU card slot, so the speed will drop from PCI X16 to X8.
I don't want to get a drop from my 4090 GPU.
so from what I understand here, I can't install x4 M.2 drives and I can use only 3.
is all correct?
please provide a link to this data, I am checking the spec/menual but I can't find this data.
Yes that's right, if you wanna ensure that your 4090 has access to the full 16 PCIe lanes, you'll have to install at most three M.2 drives, and avoid using the first M.2 slot (M.2_1). While the performance difference isn't that huge between PCIe 4.0 x16 and PCIe 4.0 x8, it's still something to note especially if you want maximum performance out of your 4090!
This PCIe lane sharing point is covered on pages 29 and 30 of the MSI motherboard manual available from MSI's website. Hope this helps!
@@ALKtech Do we can reduce the PCIe bandwidth version speed in BIOS menu? Because I've ever seen the NZXT one has a capability to reduce the PCIe bandwidth in BIOS menu from 5.0 to 4.0 version. So maybe if it could, is it will run at 4.0 x16?
@@faristampan8251 I believe there should be an option to do so, though there's really no need to manually specify the PCIe slot speed, as the motherboard will detect the PCIe generation type and adjust the link speeds accordingly! E.g. if you have a PCIe 3.0 graphics card installed, the motherboard PCIe slot will simply operate at PCIe 3.0 speeds automatically - no need for any manual tweaking!
@@ALKtech Thanks BTW! Love you reviews, keep it up!
@@ALKtechthought having the third m2 in disables the first and second slot?
I only have 1 M.2 Gen4 drive what would be the best slot to install it in? I’m assuming 2 since you said about the bandwidth sharing
That's right, if you've got only one M.2 drive, pop it into the second slot instead of the first!
@@ALKtech Thanks. I’m a bit of a noob at PC building, but I was recommended that I install it in slot 1 because the 4080 is PCIe 4 and even PCIe 5 8x is the same speed as PCIe 4 16x? so it cancels out in some way? And the M.2 drive should be installed in the slot which is connected to the CPU directly which is only slot 1 on this board? As I say, really not sure about things since this is my first time building a PC from scratch. Am I throttling my GPU at the moment or will it only become a problem when the GPU is PCIe 5 itself?
@@Flame1500 it gets a little more complicated than that - basically the slot will operate at PCIe Gen 4 x8 speed instead, simply because your 4080 doesn't support Gen 5. You will lose some performance as a result, though going by some of the articles and videos out there, it might not be thaaaat much of a performance loss. Still, if you wanna maximise your 4080's performance, go on ahead to install the M.2 drive in the second M.2 slot instead, the performance difference between having a drive in Slot 1 vs Slot 2 (if any at all) should be minimal!
Please mention the link the auto screwdriver uh using in this video.
It's a Xiaomi Electric Precision Screwdriver!
@@ALKtech I've one question, In my country this same mobo is available "MSI MAG Z790 TOMAHAWK MAX WIFI DDR5" but without the "Next Gen Ready" label on it. So, should I go for it?? Does these two mobo's makes any difference (one with label and without label)?? I don't know whether this version will be available in my country or not. Thanks for your reply.
@@Stud-d2h it's pure guesswork here, but I'd think the motherboards without the Next Gen Ready stickers may be older stock that do not have the latest 14th Gen-ready BIOSes on them. I could be wrong though, as MSI did release these boards in anticipation for 14th Gen's launch anyway. Are you buying this board from a physical retailer? If yes, I think they may be able to help you flash the board's BIOS to the latest revision if need be!
@@ALKtech I'll go for online purchase, as offline market don't have this tomahawk max wifi, And I think I need to update bios for the 14th gen myself.
@@Stud-d2h and if you do need to update the BIOS, doing so without a CPU/RAM/graphics card installed is quite straightforward with the Flash BIOS button feature!
HELP. will the wifi 7 make any difference? I live in an apartment with 5G internet wireless
WIFI 7 is still a pretty new standard - you'll have to check if your internet source is hooked up to a WIFI 7-compliant router to enjoy any speed benefits!
@@ALKtech thanks legend
This isn't next gen though, is it? Intel will change socket after this refresh and this motherboard will be obsolete. Is there any tangible advantage to upgrade from a z690 board to z790?
Next-gen being in reference to Raptor Lake Refresh that should be hitting the shelves sometime in mid-October 2023...15th Gen (or whatever else Intel might call it in the future) will be on a different processor socket, so yes, this board will be in that sense, obsolete by then! If you're already using a motherboard with the Z690 chipset, there's nearly no benefit from upgrading to Z790, as the differences between both chipsets are really minimal. Heck, you'd probably be able to drop in a Raptor Lake Refresh processor into your Z690 motherboard for an upgrade in any case - what Z690 board are you using at the moment?
@@ALKtech Yeah, that was about what I thought. The whole refresh thing throws me sometimes when people mention next generation, I usually think of different architectures.
I'm still on AM4 currently, probably will go AM5 next upgrade and will wait to see what the x770 boards or b750 boards look like whether to go with one of those or a cheaper x670e or b650e board.
Thanks for the response and have a good day!
@@richardsmith9615 totally get what you mean, especially since Raptor Lake Refresh wasn't supposed to have existed in the first place anyway...until Meteor Lake for desktops got canned.
That said, what you've got in mind sounds like a good plan, you might even score yourself a good deal with X670E or B650E boards by the time AMD's 700-series chipsets hit the market. Cheers!
I was planning to buy this motherboard to pair with i7 14700k for a new PC I'll be assembling. Your comment made me reconsider that plan. If intel is going to change the socket next year, should I go for Ryzen build with an x670 motherboard? I believe Ryzen 8000 series will be supported by AMD..
@@wickedmetalhead Yeah, x670 will support Ryzen 8000 series. It is of course your decision and in terms of performance it looks as though the 14700k is very efficient, but yeah, if you want to keep upgrade paths then perhaps AM5 is a better option for you.
Though this was a review? More like a commercial, where's the analysis
Overview vid...
Hello guys. Who has drivers for WIFI 7 for this motherboard, for windows 10 x64???
Have you tried installing the Windows 11 drivers on Windows 10? You might get lucky...
@@ALKtech Drivers for Windows 11 are not compatible for Windows 10, unfortunately. You need to look for drivers specifically for Windows 10. But this is a big problem, because most likely they are not available anywhere ((
Hey, @ALKtech I am currently in the middle of building a new pc, my cpu is i7-14700k, and I am currently searching for a good motherboard is MSI MAG Z790 TOMAHAWK MAX WIFI good enough for the i7-14700K such as the vrm its only 16+1+1 90amp and the 6 pcb layers?? Or should I purchase ASUS ROG Strix Z790-E Gaming WiFi which is around £140 more. Thank you.
Hmm, I'd personally go with the MSI in this instance, can't really justify the £140 increase in price for the ASUS board's specs, unless you're really all that into the ASUS's aesthetics. The MSI should be plenty of board for a 14700K - my two cents!
Thank you, are 6 pcb layers enough on a board like this for 7200mhz speed for the ram
@@cheeky8735 I believe so, though I must caveat I personally haven't had the chance to try out DDR5 7200 RAMs with this board!
90 amp is not as high as I'd expect for a new tomahawk I'm definitely not going to upgrade my z690 tomahawk there's nothing special about this motherboard and the lime green is ugly. The gigabyte motherboard's are the way to go with this gen of motherboard's they offer higher ddr5 speeds and better value.
I personally have a Z690 motherboard for my Intel test rig, and have no intention of swapping it out for a Z790 or Z790 Refresh board too, seeing as the differences are really minimal - think perhaps faster DDR5 support, more USB 3.2 connectivity and so on. I'd think that folks who purchase Z790 Refresh boards would be those upgrading from a much older platform (perhaps 10th/11th Gen or earlier)..
@@ALKtech "much older platform (perhaps 10th/11th Gen or earlier)" . I'm upgrading from a 2nd gen sandy bridge :rofl:
Thx a lot for providing the written article, easier to skim and to CTRL-F
@@rahpat01 oh wow 😂 my Ivy Bridge i3-3220 processor sits disused in a corner somewhere since its motherboard died many years ago...what specs are you going with for your new PC build?
@@ALKtechI considered an i7 gen 3 lol, but I'll go for a i7 14700k on MSI z790 tomahawk max / or edge max / or ASRock steel legend. I need those 8 SATA3 ports, I still have one old IDE disk & dvd to connect with an adapter 😂
My faithful i5 2500k and its ASRock Fatality mum will soon finally rest after 12 years+ of labor
It's so complicated
ALKtech hi there, do you have any freezes after logging into windows?? i have some freeze 1-2 sec and in the system logs igccservice a timeout was reached (45000 milliseconds)..don't know what wrong with that...
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