Saved the best for last? – MSI MEG Z590 Unify-X review with teardown and overclocking

1 - Packaging and first impressions 2 - Layout and connectivity 3 - Teardown and PCB analysis 4 - BIOS tour and usability 5 - Overclocking and conclusion

The already mentioned heatsinks for the M.2 slots can be removed relatively easily with two captive and one completely removable Phillips screw. It features 4 M.2 slots, divided in half into 80 mm and 110 mm. The upper one is only functional with RKL CPUs and then directly connected to the CPU with PCIe 4.0 x4. Depending on the BIOS settings, the second and third slot can either be supplied via the chipset, together with the SATA ports, or directly via the CPU, in which case the PCIe x16 slot only operates in x8. The lower M.2 slot shares its bandwidth with the lower PCIe slot through the chipset as well. I put the instructions with the diagrams at the end of the page. 😉

Removing the chipset and VRM cooler is also relatively quick, with two screws per assembly from the back of the motherboard. Here MSI also integrates two aluminum strips with thermal pads for stabilization and better cooling of the power supply.

The heatsink consists of two aluminum blocks connected by a 10 mm heat pipe. In addition, various slots and recesses are worked into the two elements to increase the surface area and, in the case of the IO cover, even act as a convection tunnel if the motherboard is installed vertically. Fortunately, active fans are completely omitted here. Good thing, because the cooling solution makes a very competent impression even without noise sources.

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The VRM or power supply is arranged as usual in an L-shape around the socket, with a total of 19 Smart Power Stages. 16 of them provide the CPU core and cache voltage, 2 provide the iGPU voltage and 1 supplies the System Agent.

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The latter also uses another component labeled “BKU0”, being an AOZ5312UQI 60 A DrMOS element from Alpha & Omega Semiconductor. The remaining power stages here are all ISL99390 90 A SPS components from Renesas. They are controlled by an ISL69269 10-phase PWM controller, also from Renesas, which we already know from all other Z590 XOC boards we have looked at so far.

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On the backside there are 8 PWM doublers, ISL6617A devices with the label “17AF”, also from Renesas. This results in 8 x 2 phases for Vcore + 2 phases for Vgt (iGPU), so that the 10 phases of the PWM controller are fully utilized. The advertised “16 + 2 +1” are as so often unfortunately also not quite correct, “8 x2 Vcore + 2 Vgt + 1 Vsa” it should correctly read.

The smaller voltages VCCIO and VCCIO 2 are each powered by a pair of “BDVN 278” and “7133 VSWR” mosfets, but I couldn’t find the exact manufacturer name. Overall, the power supply makes a very high-quality impression, with more than enough power reserves for any kind of overclocking of an LGA1200 chip and a completely passive cooling solution on top.