MSI X870E CARBON WIFI Review [Gaming, Thermals, Power & VRMs Tested!]

Hot off the heels of our roundup review of a selection of X870 Motherboards, we decided to take a more in depth look at a board we didn't feature in that video, the MSI CARBON WIFI, too see how it compares to the other boards and if it's worth the money!

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00:00 Introduction
00:23 Sponsor
01:01 The Board
02:17 Packaging
04:04 Design
04:47 Features
05:45 Rear IO
06:27 VRMs
08:23 BIOS
10:04 3DMark Timespy
10:12 3DMark CPU Benchmark
10:27 PCMark 10
10:35 Cinebench R23
10:42 Cinebench 2024
10:58 Blender
11:06 SuperPI
11:15 wPrime
11:23 Y-Cruncher
11:31 AIDA64
11:50 Cyberpunk 2077
12:02 F1 23
12:10 Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered
12:22 The Riftbreaker
12:36 Shadow Of The Tomb Raider
12:43 Boot Time
13:08 Idle Power Draw
13:25 Load Power Draw [Prime95]
13:42 Load Power Draw [Cinebench 2024]
13:49 VRM Thermals
14:53 Final Thoughts
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[gamingwithdummies]

Did you ever find out from MSI why it is underperforming relative to the others?

[andrewbauer]

I highly appreciated your review with your insight and experience. I have just ordered the MSI X870E CARBON WIFI board and my first reaction was some concern if this really was wise. I know a BIOS update can improve the test results as well as enhance stability and security (and most reviews don't mention which BIOS revision was used) but it's speculation if a future BIOS will improve performance. Comparing with the 21 X870/X870E motherboards tested at "Hardware Unboxed" on October 19th 2024, I think an additional bonus can be attributed to "board stability", which is more important to me than highest performance. Based on Steve's tests, this MSI motherboard runs stable up to DDR5-8100 MT/s. Only 2 boards Steve tested achieved higher stable transfer rates - 16 boards did not achieve stability at 8100 MT/s, the lowest being 7400 MT/s maximum. Even though I intend to use DDR5-6000 RAM, it is comforting to think that the margin of stability is higher. Also Steve's boot time was 22 sec as opposed to your 37.96 sec, although his maximum boot time of all 21 boards tested was 23 seconds.

[wiggyg]

Something seems off with gaming benchmarks. A ten percent fps swing purely based on x870 top end chipsets seems odd, motherboard of that caliber shouldn’t have such a wide variant on fps with everything else being the same

[DPbuildsNcreations]

Something has to be off about this test, both MSI Carbon and Asus ROG Crosshairs are close on everything. Shouldn’t the Asus be above all, MSI looks to low on way too many tests here.

[zackw]

Huh. It seems pretty bizzare to see such wild variations in performance between motherboards.. To the point that something weird might be going on here.

At any rate, they *should* all fall very close.. So prospective buyers really just need to look at the block diagrams and decide which board best fits their use case. This Carbon is a good all around board. If you pay attention to what goes where, you can run your GPU, three M.2 drives and an extra PCI-E 4.0 device, all at the same time, all at full bandwidth.

[christopherdevries]

Other comments were right, other cinebench tests have come out with carbon in middle of the pack with none of the 870 boards falling short in any significant way. Still thinking this is a good board.

[PsychoBenches]

This board has had 5 BIOS updates since you made this video, other boards also improving. Can you please do an updated version?

[aleksdeveloper]

Why is nobody doing a review of Asrock Nova x870e?

[Hullbreachdetected]

How do you manage to achieve that much FPS deviation with different motherboards? Have you have used 100% identical hardware and OC specs except for the motherboard itself? Looking at that list dominated by ASUS... As if somebody with a sane mind would buy an ASUS mobo for AM4/5 socket. I would've liked if you showed more from other brands such as Asrock and Gigabyte.

[jvidia]

The new MSI BIOS is in Full HD as the Asus ones?

[SquerQ]

what was the test platform? what processor?

[imattcore]

My next motherboard, alongside with r7 9800x3d and 64gb ddr5.

[tdav_a]

MSI is superb when it comes to BIOS support. Asus is overpriced pos, Gigabyte's X870E boards have too much interections with m.3 slots, and Asrock Taichi is E-ATX, which I really hate. The only valuable choice for me is MSI Carbon.

[dfbreyes]

What are the shortcomings or faults of the MSI x870 carbon wifi?

[robertsharp]

how can there be such massive performance differences between mobos?

[Wizard-kklz]

Nice review, thank you. Lovely board: that new bios does look really sweet. Totally out of my price/use range and ATX. Pity the performance is not there. Don't understand it though. Was thinking MSi was a bit conservative with their stock voltages, but the VRM temps does not reflect that, so confused. Let see if the Tomahawk does better.

[SorryHeadShott]

I have no luck on that motherboard lots of headache I ended up on ROG X870E

[camelcase]

It's a great looking feature packed mobo. I'd buy one if I could be sure the performance deficits have been resolved and it was maybe £50-60 cheaper...

[mamatadas]

Which X870E motherboard i should buy?
1) Asus Rog Strix X870E-E
2) Asus Rog Strix X870-A
3) Msi X870E Carbon Wifi
Or X670E mobo like....
4) Asus Rog Strix X670E-A

[NicolasElon]

hello why do you don 't use a an external thermal tool to compare with CM sensors ?