msiMAG X870E Tomahawk WiFi Motherboard, ATX - Supports AMD Ryzen 9000/8000 / 7000 Processors, AM5-80A SPS VRM, DDR5 Memory Boost 8400+ MT/s (OC), PCIe 5.0 x16, M.2 Gen5, Wi-Fi 7, 5G LAN

This motherboard is overpriced, considering there are sub-$300 motherboards that do essentially the same thing (especially if you don't need the overkill amount of ports on the I/O panel). But for an aesthetic, top-of-the-line black build, this motherboard is unmatched. The RGB for the dragon and "carbon" branding is lovely, and the board itself is solid and high quality. It's chock-full of ports, headers, and features- plus the BIOS is incredibly intuitive and easy to use/navigate. Unfortunately, the second M.2 slot shares a lane with the first PCIe slot, so you won't be able to use all four SSD slots unless you want to halve your GPU slot from PCIe 5.0 x16 to PCIe 5.0 x8 (even if that's pretty insignificant). Overall, though, it's a great board, but overkill for most and incredibly expensive for a motherboard.

This is a quality motherboard that comes at an ultra-premium cost. The PCIe 5.0 lanes are sensibly laid out, allowing for many M.2 NVME drives without eating into the GPU's PCIe lanes. I've had no issues getting the my Crucial T705 to negotiate as gen 5 in the M.2_1 slot. I'm upgrading from an ASUS ROG x670e Crosshair EXTREME, and the GODLIKE's expander board is much better than ASUS's offering on their premium motherboard. The GODLIKE's expander allows you to change NVME drives from outside the case (sorry, no hot-swapping). I was able to install it into PCI_E3 so that it does not take away any lanes from my GPU (though in this configuration it can only support having one of its M.2 slots active). My only complaint is that the fan on the expander just ramps to full speed right away and is unnecessarily loud.I really enjoyed the EZ Link design. It really made everything more clear and centralized over the x670e Crosshairs Extreme. The EZ Control Hub was also one of the more easy to deal with hubs. It makes sense to hide away most of the fan and RGB connections in the back of the case. I was building in a Cooler Master HAF Evo 700 and the fan and RGB hubs the case came with really made how comparatively easy the EZ Control Hub was to use apparent. The great thing about that hub is that it lets you set the fan curves in BIOS without needing to use third-party software in Windows.All the DIY niceties like the magnetic covers on unneeded ports, M.2 heatsinks, the EZ-Clip for putting in NVME drives, are all great. It is all very thoughtful and almost makes you feel like you're having a luxury PC-building experience.I've been getting some great PBO/CO results so I'm sure the VRM-supplied power and stability of the motherboard is good, but I did not A/B test it against any other board or anything.The two included temperature probes are useful. I nestled one into the cables coming from my 12VHPWR connector in order to detect any overheating situation before the connector starts melting. The other one I'm using for case ambient.I believe you can actually use them to control the fans in the motherboard settings, so that can be really useful for tuning an ideal quiet but functional cooling setup.The LCD display (Dynamic Dashboard III) is good. There's a decent amount of customization you can do once you use their software.The only significant flaw for myself is that I could not get Device Encryption to work on Windows 11. I could not get it to work on the x670e Crosshair EXTREME either. I get the same error: BitLocker cannot use Secure Boot for integrity because the expected TCG Log separator entry is missing or invalid. I suspect it's the same BIOS problem as the x670e Crosshair EXTREME and that the TCG log in PCR7 was not correctly written by their UEFI implementation.

This is the third AM5 board I've owned. The other two were the X670E-E and X870E-E. The X670E-E outright did not work. Just crashed a lot with random error messages in the event viewer that didn't make any sense. The X870E-E worked, but would drop all USB connections and then reconnect which made the machine unusable for the purpose in which I purchased it for.It has been a while since I purchased an MSI board, last one was a Z270 Gaming M7. I switched to ROG products because I have a smooth brain and they looked cool. But thinking back, I've had nothing but problems. So now I'm through with ASUS and thought back to that AMAZING MSI board I purchased for my 7700K 8 years ago. Thing still works great & MSI released a BIOS update for it about 18 months ago which for a product that old is fairly amazing. So when I went back to the decision table MSI was my first choice and boy am I glad I made the move.*Improvements over ASUS AM5 Boards*-Realtek LAN instead of Intel-Qualcom Wifi instead of Intel-5gbe LAN port + a 2.5gbe instead of one 2.5gbe which is awesome because I have a 10gbe network with a NAS that can take advantage of it.-Came with a USB flash stick that has drivers and a more recent BIOS versions instead of a packet of ROG stickers and lanyard.-Weekly BIOS updates after launches (most are Beta, but nonetheless) instead of BIOS updates every 45 days. This is crucial for new product launches such as the 9800X3D. LAN was wonky when I switched from 7800X3D to 9800X3D at first. 3 days later a Beta BIOS came out that fixed it. This would not have happened with ASUS.-PCB quality of MSI board is superior and you can tell just looking at it. Traces are noticeably thicker and separated than on the ASUS boards.-Easy release, tool free M.2 heatsink covers for all slots compared to only one quick release on the more recent ASUS board and manual screws on the older ones.-Far easier to manage driver updates without OEM bloatware (MSI Center/ArmorCrate) on MSI than on ASUS.-AM5 cooler mounting bracket is of far higher quality. Even the screw threads are machined superiorly.-Has additional PCIe 8 Pin Power connector at the bottom of the board for additional board power delivery for anyone planning on installing multiple PCIEx16, PCIEx8, PCIEx4 & PCIEx1 cards.-Memory training is MUCH faster and stable-BIOS boot time is 1/4 of what the ASUS boards were even after CMOS clearing.This product and the X870E-E are direct competitors of one another. Same feature set, same IO, same color scheme, same RGB, same price. The MSI board wins on everything. If you are deciding between the two please do yourself the favor and buy this one. You might get a good ASUS board, or you might get a dud. I'm 0 for 2 with AM5. So far I've never purchased a deflective MSI board they are 2/2. Just going right to MSI from now on. Thanks MSI!