MSI MEG Z890 Ace Review – so many features!

1. MSI MEG Z890 Ace - Only the wealthy need apply2. Performance and Testing: System3. Performance and Testing: Gaming4. Closing Thoughts5. View All Pages

Test setup

Test system
Processor: Intel Core Ultra 285K
Motherboard: MSI MEG Z890 Ace BIOS 1.A41
Memory: 48GB G.Skill Trident Z5 CK CUDIMM DDR5-8200
CPU Cooler: MSI MAG CoreLiquid i360
Graphics card: MSI RTX RTX 4090 Ventus 3X 24GB
Power supply: Seasonic Focus GX-1000 ATX 3
SSD: 1TB Crucial T700 M.2 NVMe
OS: Windows 11 24H2 Pro

Performance and Testing: System

Geekbench 6 Multi Core

In Geekbench 6 Multi Core the Core Ultra 9 285K running on the MSI MEG Z890 Ace tops the chart by a clear margin, and demonstrates the strength of this platform.

Geekbench 6 Single Core

Geekbench 6 Single Core shows the flip side of things as the AMD Zen 5 CPUs dominate this chart, however Intel Core Ultra 9 285K on MEG Z890 Ace only trails by three percent.

Clock Speeds and Power Draw

We test clock speeds and power draw in a ten minute run of Cinebench 2024 and we see that Core Ultra 200S on the MSI MEG Z890 Ace draws notably less power than 14th Gen Raptor Lake. On the other hand this demonstrates the motherboard VRM is hugely over-specified. The hardware can easily deliver a sustained 2,500W while the CPU requires less than one tenth of that power under full load.

Memory Bandwidth

AIDA64 is a useful test of memory bandwidth and we see the MSI MEG Z890 Ace dominating the chart. This is thanks to our use of G.Skill Trident Z5 CK CUDIMM DDR5-8200 memory which runs significantly faster than the regular DDR5 used by Intel Raptor Lake and AMD Zen.

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