MSI MPG X670E Carbon WiFi Motherboard Overview
Taking a first look at the MPG X670E Carbon WiFi we have a pretty much all black design with a black PCB and all black heatsinks. They have definitely toned down the “Carbon” elements on the board compared to the X570 Gaming Pro Carbon. For those wondering this is an ATX motherboard.
Starting with the CPU socket we have AMD’s new AM5 socket. You will notice the same AMD retention brackets on the top and bottom of the CPU socket, so older AM4 CPU coolers will work on these new motherboards. The big change of course is that Intel went from a PGA socket to an LGA socket, so the pins are actually on the socket itself. I honestly like this as I’ve accidently bent pins on a Ryzen processor before!
Surrounding the CPU socket we have our power delivery components. MSI is making use of an 18+2+1 power phase design, where the 18 phases are for the CPU. Each of the Vcore phases is 90A so that means you are going to get 1620A for the CPU. So running AMD’s Ryzen 9 processors won’t be an issue at all. These power delivery components are covered by two large heatsinks, which are connected by a heatpipe. The rear I/O cover is attached to one of these heatsinks, which really brings the whole top section of the board together.
At the top corner of the board you’ll find two 8-pin EPS connectors. As we move over the top-edge of the board we find four 4-pin fan headers. The one that is closest to the CPU socket is your CPU fan header and then you have a pump fan header and two system fan headers. In the top corner of the board you have your post code display.
Moving over to our memory slots we have four DDR5 DIMM slots. These slots support 128GB of DDR5 memory up to DDR5-6600 speeds.
At the edge of the board you’ll find an ARGB header, EZ debug LEDs, 24-pin ATX power connection, USB 3.2 gen 2 header, six SATA 6GB/s ports, USB 3.2 gen 1 header, and a 4-pin fan header.
At the bottom of the board you’ll find the rest of your headers and connections. From left to right we have our HD audio header, 4-pin standard RGB header, TPM header, two 4-pin fan headers, two USB 2.0 headers, a USB 3.2 gen 1 header, LED switch, and your front panel headers.
The rest of the bottom of the board is characterized by heatsinks. These include heatsinks for the M.2 slots as well as the chipset heatsink. On the chipset heatsink there is a “Formula” which lists of the main features of the board.
Removing the M.2 heatsinks we find four M.2 slots. The top two M.2 slots are PCI-Express 5.0 x4 and are directly connected to the CPU. The bottom two slots are PCI-Express 4.0 x4 and are connected to the chipset. The bottom-most slot will also support SATA M.2 drives. The top two slots feature heatsinks on the bottom of the drive, while the bottom two do not. All four slots feature a screwless locking system, which is really nice to see.
All of the heatsinks do have thermal tape on them.
As far as expansion slots go there are two PCI-Express 5.0 x16 slots and a single PCI-Express 4.0 x4 slot. If you populate both of the PCI-Express 5.0 slots they will run at x8 speeds, these two slots are also metal-reinforced.
Moving to the rear I/O we have an integrated I/O shield, which is what we come to expect these days. From left to right we have a Clear CMOS button, BIOS flash button, smart button, DisplayPort, HDMI, two USB 2.0 ports (Type-A), six USB 3.2 gen 2 ports (Type-A), a USB 3.2 gen 2 port (Type-C, supports DisplayPort output), USB 3.2 gen 2×2 port (Type-C), 2.5G Ethernet, WiFi antennas, and your audio connections. The smart button is set to restart by default, but it can actually be programmed in the BIOS.
