The Box and Packaging
Inside the box, you’ll find the motherboard, a quick installation guide, European regulatory notice, MSI stickers, EZ- WiFi antenna, 2 x EZ M.2 Clips II, EZ M.2 Clip remover, RGB splitter cable, 2 x SATA cables, a USB thumb drive and EZ connector front panel cable.
The MSI MAG Z890 TOMAHAWK WiFi Motherboard
The board comes in the standard ATX form factor and uses a 6-layer 2oz copper PCB made with server-grade materials, and features a 16+1+1+1 Duet Rail Power System and 90A SPS.
The motherboard has a black matte finish and includes their Frozr Guard cooling, which includes an Extended Heatsink, and thermal pads for MOSFETs and additional chokes.
A Closer Look
On the top right side of the motherboard, you’ll find 2 x 8-pin PCIE power connectors (which needs to be connected). There’s also a four 4-pin fan headers, one located on the far top left, and 3 on the top right of the board.
On the bottom of the motherboard, there’s an additional 3 x 4-pin fan headers for extra cooling, a total 3-pin ARGB header, 1x 4-pin RGB header and 2 x USB 2.0 headers.
The motherboard comes 4 x DDR5 DIMM slots and MSI’s Memory Boost Technology, supporting both XMP and AMD’s EXPO memory modules with speeds of up to DDR5-8400+.
Expansion slots include 2 x PCIE 4.0 x16 slots and 1 x PCIe 5.0 x16 slot featuring their EZ PCIe Release mechanism which allows for easy securing or removal of graphics cards.
Interestingly, there’s an extra PCIe Supplemental Power connector (exclusive to MSI), which provides dedicated power for the high-power demands of GPUs used in AI computing and gaming (3rd photo bottom row).
For storage, you get a total of 4 SATA ports, 1 x PCIe Gen5x4 M.2 slot and 3 x PCIe Gen4x4 M.2 slots, featuring their EZ M.2 Shield Frozr II and EZ M.2 Clip II remover.
On the back I/O panel, you’ll find a HDMI output, 2 x Thunderbolt 4 ports, 3 x USB 3.2 Gen2 ports (Type-A), 1 x USB 3.2 Gen2 port (Type-C), Flash BIOS button, Clear CMOS Button, 4 x USB 3.0 ports, 5GB LAN, connectors for WiFi 7, Line-out, Mic-in and optical S/PDIF.
