If you're thinking about a new build, you've probably noticed that the price of high-end motherboards has gone up another notch. While not the most expensive X670E motherboard in terms of cost, there are only a handful that are more expensive than the MSI MEG X670E Ace. The price of $699/£849/$1399 AUD is eyebrow raising by any measure. To be fair to MSI, other manufacturers' boards are also expensive, and you really can get a lot of motherboards for the money. But are they worth the price?

The MEG series is MSI's high-end product tier, and the MEG X670E Ace is second only to the much more expensive MEG X670E Godlike (opens in new tab) in the MSI motherboard range. So by comparison, the $699 Ace looks cheap. But it still needs to make itself stand out to justify its cost, and thankfully, Ace includes some excellent features and some nice little touches that help justify its hefty price.

The first thing I noticed when I took the board out of the box was how heavy it was. It is covered in sturdy metal, including a full-coverage backplate; it is an E-ATX board, so you'll need to make sure your case is compatible; MSI has kept the gold highlights common to previous Ace boards, which is a nice touch. The main highlights are up to six M.2 slots, four on the board and another two PCIe 5.0 slots on the add-in cards.

Add to that a wealth of connectivity options, a powerful VRM with excellent cooling, and high-spec audio, and you've got a board that's ready for Zen 5, Zen 6, and perhaps even Zen 7 upgrades.Ace is a good bet that BIOS updates will be available for years to There is no doubt that this will continue.

Looking around the board, MSI clearly has a "less is more" theme. The days of peak RGB are clearly a thing of the past. But if you like RGB, the Dragon adjacent to the I/O area and the Ace and Triangle logos on the bottom of the board feature RGB lighting. The overall design has an understated elegance and subtlety, but if you want full RGB, there are three ARGB headers and one RGB header on the board.

The board comes with four on-board M.2 slots and six SATA ports, but with the addition of a PCIe 5.0 add-in card, there are a total of six M.2 slots, three of which support PCIe 5.0. The Xpander-Z card has a solid heatsink and cooling fan. If this doesn't cool next-generation NVMe drives, nothing will. It also has a 6-pin PCIe power input. A sign of things to come.

The onboard primary M.2 slot is adjacent to the memory slot. This is a great idea. It is located in the path of air coming in from the front of the case and away from the graphics card, which explodes with heat. Furthermore - and admittedly a relatively small thing - MSI deserves credit for the slot's brilliant M.2 cooling mechanism. It provides high-quality cooling for next-generation drives while using a simple latching mechanism. This is the best M.2 mounting configuration I have seen on any motherboard.

The board has eight fan headers, a front USB 3.2 Genx2 Type-C header, and another Type-C header capable of delivering 60W of power. To use this feature, a 6-pin PCIe power connector must be connected to the adjacent port.

Features such as dual BIOS, power and reset buttons, and debug LEDs are included, although this is to be expected at this price point.

The Ace has a 22+2+1 phase VRM with a 90A power stage. While some other boards have 110A stages, the power delivery capacity of the high-end X670E board is more than sufficient to power a liquid nitrogen-cooled Ryzen 9 7950X CPU (open in new tab). Even if a future Zen 5 or Zen 6 processor were to somehow consume twice as much power, Ace would not even break a sweat.

I have often admired Gigabyte's finned heat sink designs. They prove that form and function can merge; MSI made the Ace with a finned heatsink design. This provides a much larger surface area and far fewer cooling problems. In our tests, looping a fully loaded 7950X hardly got warm, with readings of only 45 degrees. This is fantastic.

The rear I/O is impressive, but it is disappointing that the Asus Crosshair X670E Hero (open in new tab) and the cheaper Asrock X670E Taichi do not have USB4 on board. However, there are two Type-C 3.2 Gen 2x2 ports, one of which supports DP 1.4 with HBR3. 9 3.2 Gen 2 ports is nice, and the Ace has a 10G LAN. With the advent of faster Wi-Fi 6E, high-speed LANs may be losing their appeal, but they are a godsend for users of NAS, pre-wired homes, etc.

There is also an interesting button that MSI calls the Smart Button. This can be programmed in the BIOS to reset the system, turn on/off the Mystic Light RGB, boot into safe mode, and set all fans to run at full speed or at default speed. While quite useful, this feature may be of limited use to many people unless they have easy access to the rear I/O.

System Performance

Gaming Performance

As is almost always the case, unless there are major problems, most boards with the same CPU and chipset will perform very similarly to each other, almost always within the margin of error within the margin of error.

MSI's BIOS has changed little in the last few years.

Rather than spend time overclocking which limits 100% CPU cooling, we tested ECO mode which works well on the X670E Ace. if you don't want the 7950X to consume more than 200W of power, you can set it lower. You can also set it to 65W if you wish.

While there is talk about increased power consumption and TDP, experimentation with these tools can significantly reduce cooling requirements and power consumption.

I really like the X670E Ace; with the exception of USB4, it has everything you realistically need. But at $699/£849/$1399 AUS, most buyers won't even consider it when they can get a decent non-E board, including MSI's X670-P, for half the price.

Even if the electrical complexity of PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 adds cost to a new motherboard, it is still expensive. A few years ago, a $500 motherboard was considered ridiculous; now it's no laughing matter. But to be fair to MSI, they are not alone. Every other manufacturer has boards in this price range.

But I have a feeling that high pricing will not last forever. As the economy and supply chain issues settle down (hopefully), boards like the X670E Ace can be expected to last for years, even through several CPU upgrades.

Ace is Ace. It is classy and feature-rich, but it is not for everyone. If you have similar high-end parts, storage capabilities, 10G LAN, and access to lots of high-speed ports other than USB4, you'll be happy, even if your wallet isn't quite as deep.