There’s only one motherboard you can go to for top-secret stealth missions: MSI’s MEG X570 Unify motherboard. All-black simplicity is the name of the game with this new board. While it may be minimalist in look, it’s certainly not spartan in features; this board is aimed squarely at the enthusiast crowd.
We need more power
The MEG X570 Unify has heatsinks everywhere you can see; the chipset, the M.2 slots, and VRM are covered by heatsinks, and the backplate has a nice-looking shroud. It’s tough to cover up all of the capacitors and circuitry on a motherboard, but MSI has done an admirable job of covering the board while keeping everything functional.
The board is fed with two 8-pin EPS power connectors, so you might need to upgrade your power supply should you pick this board up.
As an AMD X570 board, the MEG X570 Unify supports up to Ryzen 9 CPUs. It features dual-channel memory and can handle up to 128GB of DDR4 RAM. For PCIe, you’ll find three x16 slots and two x1 slots.
The MSI MEG X570 Unify’s connectors
Moving onto connectivity, the MEG X570 Unify features 2.5Gb/s Ethernet and 802.11ax WiFi. You’ll find 8 USB ports on the back. Two are USB 2.0 Type-A, five are USB 3.2 Type-A, and there’s even one USB 3.2 Type-C. The board also features S/PDIF out and five-channel stereo connectivity supported by the Realtek ALC1220 codec.
On the board proper, you’ll also find two each of USB 2.0 headers and USB 3.2 Gen 1 headers, for up to four each of USB 2.0 and USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, as well as one more USB Type-C port.
Cooling enthusiasts will make use of the two four-pin water-pump connectors. There are also plenty of RGB connectors, including one 4-pin RGB LED connector, two 3-pin RAINBOW LED connectors, and one 3-pin Corsair connector.
What the MEG X570 Unify is missing, though, is any built-in RGB lighting. There are 4 “EZ Debug LEDs” and 1 Debug Code LED, but that’s it. It’s too bad they couldn’t find a way to hide those. The bright-red memory LEDs on my current board are eye-searing.
Pricing and availability
MSI is, of course, not talking about pricing at this point, but MSI’s other MEG x570 boards go for almost $400 and $600.
Based on the feature set, we’re betting this stealth PCB will for a little bit less than the $400 X570 ACE. Along with the lack of pricing is a lack of release date, but keep your eyes out if you’re looking for something to go with those new Noctua Chromax fans.
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A total of four memory slots allow support for up to DDR4-4400 memory, with a maximum capacity of up to 128 GB.
Wait a minute, how in the name of “we’re almost in 2020” are 17 USB ports not enough? And also, why do you need more than 4 SATA ports? It’s got 3 x M.2 slots for SSDs and if you need HDD storage, why not go for a NAS?
Hard to get excited when older OS ain’t invited so older hardware will hafta do.
“Zen2, I’m your motherboard!”
“its not true! That’s impossible!”
“Search your socket! You know it to be true!”
They should call that model either “The Darth”, “The Goth” or “The NoirBoard”.
Very few USB and SATA ports for the price. Maybe they should focus less essential things like heavy duty VRMS, fancy stickers etc and stick to basics that professionals like need.
Nice IO port plate. Shame about the fan. Also the price.