[Hardware] MSI MPG Z590 Carbon EK X Preview: EK Waterblock Meets Gaming Carbon WiFi

[SougarLord]

 

While Intel’s Rocket Lake-S Core i9-11900K CPU still isn’t available for testing, boards based around Intel’s Z590 chipset have been rolling in for weeks. So while we await benchmark results, we’ll be walking in detail through the features of these brand-new boards. First up on our bench was the ASRock Z590 Steel Legend 6E Wi-Fi, followed by the Gigabyte Z590 Aorus Master, Gigabyte’s Z590 Vision G and the MSI MEG Z590 Ace. Today, we take a close look at the MSI MPG Z590 Carbon EK X and its included EK monoblock.

 

The MSI MPG Z590 Carbon EK X is MSI and EK’s second iteration of this board. With his Carbon EK X, the monoblock has been redesigned to fit with the updated Carbon EK X theme. MSI’s gaming dragon appears on the rear IO shroud, along with the Carbon EK X name on the chipset cooler. Along with the monoblock, both of these locations include RGB LEDs that make the board pop. MSI recently released pricing for this board, and at $499, it’s $100 more than the Z490 version, which released at $399.

 

MSI’s current Z590 product stack consists of 11 models, with most falling into the MEG (high-end) MPG (mid-range) and MAG budget) lineups. We’re greeted by several familiar SKUs and a couple of new ones.  Starting at the top is the flagship MEG Z590 Godlike, the Ace we’re looking at now, and a MiniITX MEG Z590I Unify. The mid-range MPG line consists of four boards (Carbon EK X, Gaming Edge WiFi, Gaming Carbon WiFi and Gaming Force), while the less expensive MAG lineup consists of two boards (Z590 Tomahawk WiFi and Torpedo). Wrapping up the current product stack are two “Pro” boards in the Z590 Pro WiFi and Z590-A Pro. The only thing missing out of the gate is a MicroATX board, but it’s likely we’ll see one or two down the line.

 

We can’t talk about Rocket Lake-S performance metrics -- not that we had a CPU to test boards with anyway. All we’ve seen at this point are rumors and a claim from Intel of a significant increase to IPC, but the core count was lowered from 10 cores/20 threads in Comet Lake (i9-10900K) to 8 cores/16 threads in the yet-to-be-released i9-11900K. To that end, we'll stick with specifications and features here, adding a full review that includes benchmarking, overclocking and power consumption shortly.

 

MSI’s MPG Z590 Carbon EK X includes all the parts you’d expect from a mid-range motherboard and it consists of a custom-made monoblock to keep the CPU and power bits running cool. The motherboard includes a premium Realtek ALC4080 codec, plenty of storage options (three M.2 sockets and six SATA ports), plus 10 USB ports, including a USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C port on the rear IO. We’ll cover these features and more in detail below. But first, here’s the full specs list from MSI.