DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 come at a cost
Graphics card prices may make most of the headlines, but if you’re pricing a new system build, you’re noticing motherboard prices jumping at least as much, if not more. maybe. The MSI MEG X670E ACE is one such example, selling for $728 on Amazon at the time of writing. This may seem like a lot, but the MSI X670E GODLIKE costs as much as $1300, so it represents the high end in the middle of the pack!
That investment gives you a board with a robust electrical system, a 22 + 2 + 1 Duet Rail Power System and a 90A power stage, all of which have their own heatsinks. The storage system includes 6 SATA 6 Gb/s connectors and 4 PCIe 5.0 M2 slots that fit M2 devices up to 2280 size, one of which is populated with a WiFi 6 card . Besides WiFi, he also has 10G LAN thanks to Marvell AQC113CS-B1-C NIC.
FPS was impressed with the performance, apart from the fact that Windows 11 doesn’t have a driver for the NIC at setup, and of course its price.
