Want a super-clean desktop construct? Get a motherboard with all of the connectors on the rear. The solely downside is value. It’s gonna price you. But maybe not as a lot because it as soon as did, because of some new “Project Zero” Intel motherboards introduced by MSI for CES.
Project Zero is in fact MSI’s branding for motherboards with all of the connectors on the rear, an strategy different motherboard makers together with Gigabyte and its personal challenge Stealth boards and Asus and its BTF line are additionally operating with.
Like many of the competitors, MSI Project Zero motherboards have usually been dear premium merchandise so far. But that adjustments with the brand new MSI MAG Z890 Tomahawk WIFI PZ and MAG Z890 Tomahawk WIFI PZ White.
Tomahawk is MSI’s mainstream household of motherboards and it is the primary time Project Zero and that extra inexpensive collection of mobos have been married. As MSI itself places it, Tomahawk merchandise are aimed toward PC builders who desire a “no-frills, dependable platform for his or her PC.”
Like all Project Zero motherboards, these mobos transfer the connectors for all the things bar the CPU, DRAM, and SSD on the rear, permitting for an ultra-clean look. As the Z890 moniker signifies, the boards are designed for Intel’s new Arrow Lake CPUs as much as and together with the range-topping Core Ultra 9 285K and sport an honest sport 16+1+1+1 setup of VRMs for 19 energy levels.
You additionally get DDR5 reminiscence overclocking assist as much as 9200 MT/s, a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot for GPUs, a PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot for NVMe SSDs, plus a pair of PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots. Oh, and two Thunderbolt 4 ports, an Intel Wi-Fi 7 card, and 5 gigabit Ethernet.
Slightly frustratingly given worth for cash might be the central enchantment of those boards in comparison with the “again join” competitors, MSI hasn’t truly launched pricing for these boards.
It’s additionally price taking into account that you’re going to usually want a suitable case to make use of certainly one of these super-clean mobos. In follow, that in all probability means extra money on a brand new case, though as Nick defined, a few of these rear-connect boards are extra suitable with legacy instances than others.
Still, as we discovered final yr, these again join boards aren’t nearly seems to be, they’ve cooling benefits, too. Anyway, hopefully, MSI’s new Tomahawk boards are a part of a broader transfer to creating cleaner PC builds extra mainstream and inexpensive. Once you have constructed a PC with all of the connectors neatly hidden away, it is powerful to return to that previous rat’s nest of cables.
