MSI MEG X570 Unify Motherboard Review

Dan_D

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Introduction



Today, we are taking a look at the MSI MEG X570 Unify. This is a mid-range, low frills X570 motherboard targeted towards the enthusiast market. Specifically, it offers a blacked-out aesthetic and absolutely no RGB LED lighting. I’ve been writing motherboard reviews now for many years. Since the advent of RGB LED lighting on motherboards, I’ve seen comments from many readers who absolutely hate RGB LED lighting for one reason or another. Motherboard makers have almost always allowed the end-user to turn these lights off. That should be enough right? Well, as it turns out things aren’t that easy. The reality is that most motherboards don’t give you much if any control over the lighting in the UEFI BIOS.



Most motherboards do allow you to turn the LED’s off in the BIOS even if they don’t allow any...

Continue reading...
 
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Very nice review, thorough as usual. I see MSI fixed their VRM overheating here, rather embarrassing on their first lower end 570x boards. Best thing for RGB in my view is that it lights up inside the case better to check for any water leaks, other than that I could care less. This motherboard looks like a very nice balance between VRM's, features, costs. This board would be very tempting but I am looking for a good TRX40 board.

Any chance on testing out MSI TRX40 PRO 10G? There is a total lack of reviews for this Thread Ripper motherboard, that goes for many of the Thread Ripper motherboards as well. Looks like an excellent board with decent features compared to cost, unique with the add in cards as well, also no RGB on the board other than headers, considering having no RGB can be a positive feature :).
 
If I click on the link to MSI from the Summary in the OP

It gives me an error message:
An Error Was Encountered
The URI you submitted has disallowed characters.

But If I click on Continue Reading, and go to the original article, and click the link there, it goes through just fine.

Appears something in your article summary is mangling the URL.
 
Very nice review, thorough as usual. I see MSI fixed their VRM overheating here, rather embarrassing on their first lower end 570x boards. Best thing for RGB in my view is that it lights up inside the case better to check for any water leaks, other than that I could care less. This motherboard looks like a very nice balance between VRM's, features, costs. This board would be very tempting but I am looking for a good TRX40 board.

Any chance on testing out MSI TRX40 PRO 10G? There is a total lack of reviews for this Thread Ripper motherboard, that goes for many of the Thread Ripper motherboards as well. Looks like an excellent board with decent features compared to cost, unique with the add in cards as well, also no RGB on the board other than headers, considering having no RGB can be a positive feature :).

I'd love to review the MSI TRX40 Pro 10G. Unfortunately, AMD never sent us a Threadripper CPU. We buy stuff as we need it, but sadly, Threadripper's price point makes it cost prohibitive for us at this time. That said, I have seriously contemplated buying a Threadripper 3960X, using it for a couple of reviews and throwing it into my own system but I've had more pressing financial concerns.
 
Also, I left a comment via the Leave A Reply block in the article. I had expected it to link back to this thread, but it doesn't appear to have. Was that intended to link back to this discussion forum, or is it it's own thread/discussion separate from the forum?

I'm cool either way, just didn't know what the expectation was. Just to clarify, I am logged into the WP front end, the comment does show as coming from my account, so it wasn't that I was not logged in.

Ninja edit - OP link should be fixed. Apparently it didn't like the ? in the URL to open in a new window (another bug in this thing...)
 
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Also, I left a comment via the Leave A Reply block in the article. I had expected it to link back to this thread, but it doesn't appear to have. Was that intended to link back to this discussion forum, or is it it's own thread/discussion separate from the forum?

I'm cool either way, just didn't know what the expectation was. Just to clarify, I am logged into the WP front end, the comment does show as coming from my account, so it wasn't that I was not logged in.

Bloody buggy integration. It un-configured itself for no apparent reason. If I've fixed it, then this comment will show up both in the forums and on the article page. Not sure we can sync back the missing ones - sorry about that!
 
I'd love to review the MSI TRX40 Pro 10G. Unfortunately, AMD never sent us a Threadripper CPU. We buy stuff as we need it, but sadly, Threadripper's price point makes it cost prohibitive for us at this time. That said, I have seriously contemplated buying a Threadripper 3960X, using it for a couple of reviews and throwing it into my own system but I've had more pressing financial concerns.
Ok, well if I pick one up or some other board I will post short review/tests here. Maybe late next month.
 
Good review, thanks. But this guy will not spend more than $200 on a motherboard, and I would like to aim for much less than that. $150 is ok, $100 is even better. Not talking about Threadripper or exotic stuff.
 
Good review, thanks. But this guy will not spend more than $200 on a motherboard, and I would like to aim for much less than that. $150 is ok, $100 is even better. Not talking about Threadripper or exotic stuff.

We're looking at doing a couple of budget X570 boards up next, so that may be relevant to your interests. Depends what @Brent_Justice can drum up for Dan...
 
What does MEG stand for? MSI's Extremely Greedy?
 
What does MEG stand for? MSI's Extremely Greedy?

Given the price point of motherboards like the Unify, that doesn't really fit. If the "MEG" prefix was tied to motherboards like the GODLIKE exclusively, then you'd be right.
 
Nice review, and nice MoBo!

I'm thinking of going MSI for the next overhaul (R7 3700X).

Here would be my typical usage scenario:
- Use the AMD Wraith HSF
- No CPU OC'ing (primarily gaming, so I'm more focused on the GPU)
- All DIMM slots populated (4x8GB single rank modules)
- Single GPU, and nothing else populating any other expansion slots

Any thoughts on the MSI MPG X570 Gaming Plus?
 
Nice review, and nice MoBo!

I'm thinking of going MSI for the next overhaul (R7 3700X).

Here would be my typical usage scenario:
- Use the AMD Wraith HSF
- No CPU OC'ing (primarily gaming, so I'm more focused on the GPU)
- All DIMM slots populated (4x8GB single rank modules)
- Single GPU, and nothing else populating any other expansion slots

Any thoughts on the MSI MPG X570 Gaming Plus?

I have some thoughts.................

-The Wraith is a bare bones, I don't want to spend any money type of heat sink. If we were back in the old days when CPU clocks were fixed and it got the job done while making an awful racket (as stock coolers tend to do) you would be fine. That's not how things work today. Clocks are variable and adjust based on thermals and other variables. If you use a low end cooler, your CPU will not boost as often or even clock as high as a better cooled CPU will. Getting a better quality air cooler will pay dividends in performance. Even on a "stock" CPU.

-Overclocking doesn't matter in this context. There are only really two kinds of overclocks with Ryzen 3000 series CPU's. Manual all core overclocks and per CCX complex overclocks. Since you've chosen a Ryzen 7 3700X, you are in luck in that you only have a single chiplet rather than two. One of these tends to be substantially worse than the other, limiting overclocking potential. You won't be held back by one "****let" on a 3700X. You also won't need quite as much in the way of power delivery to overclock. Even so, you will find that overclocking a single CCX probably won't benefit you that much. Manual all core overclocking on a 3700X can be potentially useful as you have much lower boost clocks than you would on a 3900X or 3950X.

-This is a bad idea. Don't do it. Stick with two DIMMs and two DIMMs only. Ryzen 3000 series CPU's love higher memory clocks and tighter timings. You will not achieve this with four DIMMs. There is a point of diminishing returns after 3800MHz as Infinity Fabric clocks and memory clocks require a divider at that point. So, you don't need ultra-expensive RAM, but going to four DIMMs means your limiting your RAM speed to DDR4 2933MHz or DDR4 2666MHz. Some people will achieve better, but you won't be doing it on that board more than likely. While MSI's do clock RAM fairly well, you need one of their better ones. I'll get to that in just a moment.

-This is fine. No one uses SLI anymore. Not even me. And I've used SLI from the 6800 Ultra days all the way through the GTX 1080 Ti. I used AMD's Crossfire whenever I went AMD during that time as well. If I thought for a second I could get some extra performance consistently out of a second RTX 2080 Ti, I'd have a second one and I'd be running SLI. So you are good on this front.

-To be blunt. MSI's cheaper motherboards for X570 have VRM's that run way too **** hot. To the tune of about 30-40c hotter than they should in some cases. MSI's MEG X570 Gaming Ace and MEG X570 Unify are about as low as you really want to go if your going with MSI. Yes, that's right. You need to be at about $300 or better with MSI or you aren't getting what you are paying for. Hardware Unboxed did a good job of covering this. Eventually, MSI even admitted that the design of their lower end VRM's were pretty bad.


In other words, I wouldn't go with such a low end motherboard from MSI. If you are looking to spend less than $250 on a motherboard, stick with GIGABYTE or ASUS.
 
No, it wasn't intentional. It was something I realized at the end of the review process and didn't have time to go back and reshoot the photo. Even if I had, it might not have matched the others in terms of lighting. I didn't want to redo all the board shots as a result of my own OCD.
 
Dan, you got my hopes up and I go try to buy it and everyone is out, Both New Egg & Amazon say unavailable and do not know if they will get any more in stock. o_O
 
Thanks for the thorough review. I've been considering purchasing an MSI MEG X570 Unify MB for some time now. I just want to confirm that the board does not support RAID for the M.2 NVMe drives. While the manual doesn't seem to mention it, the manual for the X570 ACE seems to allude to NVMe RAID, but doesn't come right out and say it is supported. I've seen people claim in other posts that they are running Sabrent Rocket NVMe drives in a RAID 0 config on a Unify MB, so I'm seeking the truth... The ACE and Unify are fairly similar. They run the same PIDE/SATA, and System/Chipset drivers. And, while the BIOS versions are off, they both run a derivative of AMI 7C35V, and the comments in the BIOS updates are identical even though the ending versions are different. I'd just like to know for certain if this board can handle RAID 0 on NVMe drives.
Thanks once again.
Steve
 
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