Introduction
Today, we now have a monster of a board in our hands: the MSI MEG Z890 GODLIKE. This motherboard is one in every of MSI’s latest creations, featuring the Intel Z890 chipset, designed for the most recent Intel Core Ultra Series 2 lineup.
When you aren’t aware of the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 CPU’s or the Z890 chipset, it would be best to take a detailed take a look at our Intel Core Ultra 9 285K & Ultra 5 245K CPU Review that we did on the product launch last 12 months. There, we go into depth on the brand new features and performance of the chips overall. We do need to remind our readers that this latest generation from Intel provides ample Gen5 PCIe lanes to permit for each a Gen5 GPU AND a Gen5 NVME drive to operate concurrently, which was a standing criticism from our review staff with the last generation from Intel.
Outside of the extra Gen5 lanes, you’ll notice the extra Gen4 lanes available if the chipset manufacturer so chooses official support as much as 6,400 MHz memory speeds without having to overclock, and the initial groundwork for adding an NPU to your system for AI in the long run. The last essential thing to notice is the requirement for manufacturers to incorporate a minimum of two (2) Thunderbolt 4 Ports, which is greatly appreciated for expanded connectivity options.
For those unfamiliar with MSI’s line of motherboards, the MEG is available in at the highest of the product SKUs, with the GODLIKE being one step further up the ladder. The MSI MEG Z890 GODLIKE is available in at an eye-watering $1,099.99 on the time of writing, making it one in every of, if not the costliest motherboard we now have reviewed up to now. What makes it this cost? Well, dive on in with us and allow us to see.
MSI MEG Z890 GODLIKE LGA 1851 Prolonged ATX Motherboard
Packaging and Contents
So, what does a motherboard just like the MSI MEG Z890 GODLIKE sell for over $1,000 seem like? The very first thing you’ll notice is the sheer size and weight of the box as compared to a typical motherboard box, just like the MSI MPG Z890 CARBON WIFI we reviewed last 12 months, it is definitely twice the dimensions and weight. Beyond the dimensions of the box, you can find that the actual packaging is subdued and has a really premium feeling, as you’d expect. We were surprised by the eye to detail MSI has put into just the packaging, from the texture of the box to how the box literally raises itself as you open it to present the motherboard to you as if it were a present.
The contents of the box don’t disappoint for the value of the MSI MEG Z890 GODLIKE. The highest layer has the motherboard itself in a foam cut out, one in every of the higher packaging jobs we now have seen for a motherboard, followed by a second level where you can find the Thunderbolt 5 Expansion card, the M.2 XPANDER-Z Slider Gen5 card, an EZ Control Hub, and a box with the WIFI antenna, and a box of accessories. We are going to touch base on all of those in a future section because of their integration with the motherboard itself.
Beyond this, there’s yet one more layer inside this box that features a number of the miscellaneous cables, books, etc. that include the MSI MEG Z890 GODLIKE. These extra cables include two (2) SATA cables, one (1) 1 to 2 RGB extension cable, one (1) 1 to three ARGB extension cable, one (1) ARGB extension cable, two (2) Thermistor Cables, one (1) EZ Front Panel Cable, one (1) 1 to three EZ Conn-Cable, one (1) EZ Control Hub SATA power cable, one (1) EZ Link cable, one (1) M.2 Xpander Card Fan control cable, and one (1) Thunderbolt 5 header cable.
After the cables you may also see the M.2 screw and plate standoff set, one (1) EZ Control hub screw set, a EZ M.2 Clip II remover, extra thermal pads for the M.2 Xpander card, a fast installation guide, regulatory notices, and a USB drive with all of the drivers required for this motherboard.
MSI MEG Z890 GODLIKE Features
The MSI MEG Z890 GODLIKE is so full of features that it’s difficult to account for all of them. For starters, the very first thing you’ll notice is the screen positioned to the appropriate of the DDR memory slots, that is positioned on the highest of the “EZ BRIDGE” that dominates the motherboard. The “EZ BRIDGE” will be quickly disconnected from the motherboard with it being magnetically connected, and to permit for easier connection of fans and ARGB, something we highly recommend you doing. The Bridge covers up the ATX power, in addition to a dedicated plug for USB C Power Delivery, that are all placed on a 90-degree angle to what you normally expect on a motherboard.
Beyond this, the Bridge also gives quick access to USB Headers, front panel connectors, in addition to a connection to the “EZ Control Hub” which expands your fan connections, RGB connections, and flow meters to a distant device within the case. The last item we would like to the touch base on with the Bridge is the screen we mentioned, which is MSI’s “Dynamic Dashboard III”, which by default gives you error codes on boot, temperature data, voltage data, in addition to options to personalize the knowledge/display.
We do need to note that our sample arrived with what looked like a clouded area over the screen. Reaching out to MSI, it was explained that our particular review unit likely had scuffs and scratches because QC did multiple rework passes on this unit. When the screen was lit, it was not noticeable.
Beyond the insanity that’s the “EZ BRIDGE,” this motherboard has an oversized VRM cooling solution, with more dynamic lighting found on the highest of it, then there’s the M.2 cooling solution that’s well thought out and fully tool-less in design, and that also has dynamic lighting. Overall, whenever you start diving into the MSI MEG Z890 GODLIKE, you will notice an extreme level of attention to detail.
From the engraving of “GODLIKE” on the VRM cooling, to the small hidden cover of the BIOS switch location, and to the additional LED’s all hidden throughout the M.2 cooling plates, and the metal back plate even has “GODLIKE” branding on it, making this motherboard one in every of the more detail oriented motherboards we now have come across up to now.
Power Delivery
MSI has spared no expense with power for the MEG Z890 GODLIKE, with a 26+2+1+1 Duet Rail Power System (DRPS) and a 110Amp Smart Power Stage design, anyone attempting to push their CPU to the limit will almost certainly not be limited by the motherboard. That is all coupled with a 10-layer PCB design and an oversized VRM cooling solution that won’t disappoint. MSI has gone with a Direct Touch Cross Heat-pipe design with Wavy Fins to assist make this one beast of a FROZR cooling solution.
Memory and Storage
The MSI MEG Z890 GODLIKE runs with DDR5, un-buffered, non-ECC memory, with a maximum capability of 64 GB per slot, for a complete capability of 256 GB of ram, right at the utmost amount we now have seen for a Z890 motherboard up to now. You’ll have the opportunity to overclock your memory quickly with Intel XMP 3.0 profiles or the old-fashioned way with clock and voltage adjustments; either way, MSI has a claimed speed of as much as 9,200 MHz+ listed for this motherboard. We’re unable to check this claim as we only have a 6,400 MHz kit on-hand, nevertheless, we had zero issues meeting this with the MEG Z890 GODLIKE.
On the subject of NVMe storage, MSI has a complete of six (6) onboard slots available to be used. There may be one dedicated Gen5 slot from the CPU, in addition to a dedicated Gen 4 slot (M.2_1/2), followed by two (2) dedicated PCIe-only Gen4 slots (M.2_3/4), in addition to a mix Gen4 PCIe + SATA slot (M.2_5).
Finally, the last slot, M.2_6, is a dual-option drive, when used with a Gen5 drive it can use lanes from the CPU slot; if it is just not in a position to use the Gen5 lanes, it can use Gen4 lanes from the Z890 chipset. The default behavior is for this slot to be Gen4; you have to to manually change this within the Advanced BIOS settings to force it to be Gen5.
That is the primary motherboard we now have run into on the Z890 motherboard that uses this many Gen5 lanes, which is a pleasant thing to see on this price cap. Beyond this, there are 4 (4) total standard SATA 6GB/s connectors available for big storage devices.
The last item we would like to the touch on is the inclusion of MSI’s M.2 XPANDER-Z SLIDER GEN5. We touched on this earlier within the review, which allows for a further two (2) M.2 NVME drives to be installed in your system. This card may be very well built with an all-aluminum shroud, in addition to a fan provided for cooling. Presently, we were unable to check it because of needing drives without cooling for use; nevertheless, keep tuned as we’re planning a follow-up testing where we put all eight (8) slots to the test concurrently to see what this motherboard can actually do.
Expansion
While there are other motherboards with more PCIe expansion slots than the MSI MEG Z890 GODLIKE, the three (3) provided ones should cover the overwhelming majority of users. The uppermost slot is PCIE 5.0 with the aptitude to operate with a full 16 lanes. When you install anything within the second slot, or the bottom-most M.2 slot, it can lower to eight lanes. Each of those slots feature MSI’s Steel Armor II, which is a full metal reinforcement for the PCIe slot to assist with the burden of today’s generation of GPUs. Beyond that, the topmost slot has a push button release on the “EZ BRIDGE” positioned right next to the ability and restart buttons, making removal a breeze.
I/O
I/O on the MSI MEG Z890 GODLIKE is, to place it mildly, next-level. While we don’t normally dive into internal I/O options, we will probably be making an exception for this motherboard, because it has some unique features to it that we would like to spotlight. With using the EZ Bridge, MSI has moved the vast majority of the on-board I/O connectors to the appropriate side of the motherboard, or moved them entirely to the EZ Bridge or the EZ Control Hub to permit for easier installation, and potentially more importantly higher wire management options to assist keep the Dynamic Dashboard more visible.
First, we would like to concentrate on the EZ Control Hub, which connects to the EZ Bridge with the provided cable, in addition to a further power cable (powered by two (2) SATA power connectors). This Hub has a complete of seven (7) fan connectors, a three-pin water flow meter connector, two (2) ARGB plugs, and a normal RGB plug. There may be one nifty feature we didn’t see mentioned within the literature for this motherboard, which is that the EZ Control Hub is definitely magnetic to simply mount behind the motherboard tray of a case.
The following area we would like to consider is the EZ BRIDGE area, which by itself is jam-packed. On the Bridge itself, you can find your front panel connectors and buzzer, the EZ Control Hub connector, two (2) thermistor sensor connections, a Tuning Controller connection, an EZ-Conn connector, and a USB 2.0 breakout plug. The EZ-Conn connector uses the 1 to three EZ Conn-Cable supplied with the motherboard, which allows an RGB Fan to be connected for power, and RGB signal, with a USB 2.0 breakout as well for adding two (2) USB 2.0 ports.
Beyond the EZ BRIDGE, there are still loads of additional connectors positioned on the appropriate side with 90-degree headers, including yet one more Fan connector together with two (2) system pump connectors. After this there are multiple other USB connectors, including one other USB 2.0 plug, together with two (2) USB 5Gbps connectors for a complete of six (6) additional plugs.
After this, you may also see two (2) 6-pin PCIe power plugs, neither are required for the operation of this motherboard, but it surely could come in useful. The topmost plug is for full 60W charging for the USB-C port beside it, and the underside plug provides auxiliary power to the 2 Gen5 PCIe, making the slots PCIe 5.1 ready. The last item of note is a Thunderbolt 4 connector for the front panel of your case.
Finally, we would like to the touch base on the rear I/O options available on the MSI MEG Z890 GODLIKE. You’ll discover a complete of eight (8) USB-A ports with 10Gbps speeds, together with an additional five (5) USB-C 10Gbps speed ports, in addition to a 20Gbps USB-C and a Thunderbolt 4 USB-C port. There are also three buttons on the back, one is a Smart Button for user-configurable options, one other to clear the CMOS, and the last will allow a user to flash the UEFI BIOS with only power connected and a USB drive installed in the proper port.
Following the USB options, there are three total network options: WIFI 7 from an Intel Killer BE1750x with Bluetooth 5.4, an RJ-45 port for an Intel Killer 5Gbps LAN, in addition to an RJ-45 port for the 10Gbps LAN from a Marvell AQC113CS chip. Lastly, there’s 7.1 channel surround sound from an ALC4082 audio processor to offer audio from an S/PDIF out port, while also having a MIC IN and a Line-out port.
UEFI
As we now have come to see in the most recent generation of motherboards from MSI, this motherboard is powered by MSI’s Click BIOS X, a Graphical UEFI BIOS that has had some mixed results previously. We’re pleased to say that the MSI MEG Z890 GODLIKE’s implementation remedied our primary criticism of the mouse not working.
When you enter the UEFI for the primary time, you can find yourself within the “EZ Mode” screen, where you may quickly adjust memory speeds and CPU boosts, in addition to see plenty of data from Fan Speeds to temperatures, to CPU voltage and speed. From this screen, you can even easily activate / off various options, in addition to access the Hardware Monitor for quickly changing speeds in your fans and pumps. The last item of immediate use for many users on this screen is adjusting your XMP memory settings, which worked flawlessly for us, allowing us to attain the total 6,200 MHz speed of our Patriot kit.
The Click BIOS X has just a few quick shortcut keys which are available for users. By hitting “F7,” you may swap between EZ Mode and Advanced; hitting “F1” gets you to the Help menu, and you may click on the magnifying glass to look for any setting throughout the UEFI.
While we did an in-depth check of all of the features and pages throughout the Click BIOS X, we is not going to be fully detailing them inside this review. There are just a few areas we would like to bring to our readers’ attention. The System Status tab gives you quick access to information on all drives installed, together with some quick information in your UEFI BIOS construct information.
After this, the Advanced section has a lot of the in-depth options you’ll likely not need to touch, except the PCIe setup that may allow the underside most M.2 slot for use as a Gen5 slot. The last part we would like to the touch on is the Overclocking tab, here you can find every setting conceivable for overclocking your system, and possibly just a few you won’t. For all other options, please take a take a look at the admittedly large gallery below to see all of the ins and outs that the Click BIOS X has to supply.
Motherboard Performance
As we mentioned in a previous review, we now have revamped the performance section of our review and are all the time adjusting. The photographs above this section outlay the outcomes of all of our testing, and we will probably be outlining the performance in the next section. Our goal with this adjustment is to permit us to more easily run through our results. For 2025, we will probably be using an Intel Core Ultra 7 265K CPU for all of our motherboard testing.
First, we would like to try storage options, and for that, we will probably be using the MSI SPATIUM M570 PRO FROZR (originally reviewed at the tip of 2023) as our primary drive and our trusty ADATA LEGEND 970 2TB NVME SSE as our secondary drive. As all the time, we will probably be using CrystalDiskMark for speed testing while using the 1GB profile on each of those drives concurrently.
For this test, we ran CrystalDiskMark on all variations of two slots getting used (on the motherboard itself; for this test, we didn’t include the M.2 XPANDER card supplied with the motherboard). With the MSI MEG Z890 GODLIKE, we found the very best combination to be the M570 installed within the M.2_1 slot, with the ADATA 970 within the M.2_3 slot, nevertheless, it ought to be noted that every one options were essentially the identical. For this mix, we found a top speed of 12,378 MB/s read and 11,671 MB/s write on the M570, and a read of seven,173 MB/s read with a 6,993 MB/s write on the ADATA 970. Take a take a look at the gallery for a full breakdown of our testing speeds.
Next, we tested the memory bandwidth through the use of AIDA64’s Cache & Memory Benchmark, where our Patriot memory kit was in a position to achieve a Memory read speed of 95,127 MB/s, a write speed of 84,648 MB/s, and a replica speed of 87,163 MB/s. These are right consistent with the speeds we now have come to expect with this memory kit on the Intel Z890 platform.
Following this testing,g we hit the synthetic benchmarks of PCMark, 3Dmark, Cinebench, Blender, and at last, V-Ray. In all of those tests, we bumped into no surprises, and the whole lot was testing around where we expected from the 265K CPU. For PCMark, we hit a complete rating of seven,516, which rivals previous testing for our Intel Core Ultra 9 285k in the identical test.
Our 3Dmark testing gave us a Max Threads rating of 16,626, and Night Raid gave us a final rating of 25,266, with a CPU-only rating of 23,413. When doing the Cinebench testing, we had a multi-core rating of 34,761 and a single-core rating of two,289. Blender gave us final scores of 219.56 for monster, 142.79 for junkshop, and 108.68 for classroom, all of that are good scores where we expect them. Finally, V-Ray clocks in at 34,778.
VRM Temperature
The last a part of our testing that we’re ensuring stays around is our VRM Temperature test. As a reminder for this test we run Cinebench R23 for at least 15 Minutes on Multi Core to totally stress the system, then we record the VRM/MOSFET temperatures as reported by HWiNFO 64, in addition to observed temperatures as measured by an Infrared Handheld thermometer, with all testing occurring at an ambient temperature of ~75°F (~24°C).
The MSI MEG Z890 GODLIKE reported the MOS temperatures, in addition to PCH temperatures inside HWiNFO 64. During testing, we saw a maximum reported PCH temperature on the Intel Z890 as 37 °C, with a maximum temperature of 58.5 °C on the MOS. That is a few of the very best numbers we now have seen on this test up to now, and it was backed up by the hand-held infrared we use. With this, we saw a maximum VRM / MOSFET cooler temperature of 51.9 °C and a 35 °C temperature for the Z890 chipset, each a number of the lowest we now have run across.
Conclusion
The MSI MEG Z890 GODLIKE falls at absolutely the top of any Z890 motherboard in each the value and have category. Did it live as much as the associated fee? Well, that depends. With its total of six (6) on-board M.2 slots, fully tool-less removable cooling for the entire drives, to the top-notch cooling for the VRM’s. This pricey motherboard does deliver for its cost.
Installlation and Use
Installation of the MSI MEG Z890 GODLIKE is just not easy, mostly because of its E-ATX size. We had to establish off of our normal test bench as we couldn’t connect the ability to the motherboard with the best way the 24-pin power connector is provided. While this can be a bad thing for our test bench, it’s ideally positioned for installation in a case, because it allows for easy wire management, and is unquestionably something we would really like to see on more high-end motherboards. Beyond that, Windows 11 installed and not using a hitch; there have been no issues with driver installation or software installation, and all of our testing met or exceeded our expectations.
Final Points
So we’re back to the unique query: Is the MSI MEG Z890 GODLIKE definitely worth the money? For those in search of the highest performance possible on the Z890 platform, or those trying to construct a pc that has every attention to detail, all with money not being the first factor, this may be the motherboard for you. While there are other options on the market, none come near the features or the eye to detail the MSI MEG Z890 GODLIKE has. This motherboard is all “WOW” Aspects, except possibly being the very best “bang for the buck”.
MSI MEG Z890 GODLIKE LGA 1851 Prolonged ATX Motherboard
