MSI MEG Unify

[Jamin280672]

I read that the unify has the heatsink made of aluminium vs the ace being plastic or something of that sort and it actually did better in the vrm temps compared to the ace. I am in the fence now as well originally I was going for the x570-e but the omission of the 3rd nvme that Asus does drives me mad. Its a shame that there are no reviews yet on this mobo.

To be honest, im not even so sure the VRM's need a heatsink on them at all, on my ACE they dont even slightly break a sweat, even in Prime or IBT etc, ive never seen them go over 65oC, for chips rated to self shutdown at 125oC thats pretty good, its the chipsets on these X570 boards that get hot over everything else, but again, im most cases, not dangerously hot, heres mine right now:

 

[RandomMonkeH]

I don't think anybody would complain about having overkill cooling on their VRM. I do wish they had kept the heatpipe from the ACE on the Unify as well, and perhaps used that massive VRM heatsink to ditch the fan altogether. If Aorus can do it....
Chipset fans, especially those hidden behind graphics cards, need to go away.

@Jamin280672 - how do you find the ACE?
I've seen issues mentioned about Front Audio not working on these boards, is that just an isolated issue and working fine on yours? Unify looks to have the same audio setup just minus the heatsink/cover.

 

[Jamin280672]

I don't think anybody would complain about having overkill cooling on their VRM. I do wish they had kept the heatpipe from the ACE on the Unify as well, and perhaps used that massive VRM heatsink to ditch the fan altogether. If Aorus can do it....
Chipset fans, especially those hidden behind graphics cards, need to go away.

@Jamin280672 - how do you find the ACE?
I've seen issues mentioned about Front Audio not working on these boards, is that just an isolated issue and working fine on yours? Unify looks to have the same audio setup just minus the heatsink/cover.

Yeah I guess the heatpipe helps cool the hotter chipset as the VRM doesnt need it so much, however, the Gigabyte board that you mention without the fan is a £750 board, all their other lower tier boards have a fan, so ill hazard a guess that its an expensive heatsink to produce on that particular board, however, the only time ive ever heard the fan on the chipset is when I manually set it to full speed in the bios to see how loud it was, it rarly ever fires up and when it does, I dont hear it, I love the board, never had any problems with it at all.

The only board ive heard issues with is the ASRock Taichi, as the chipset fan gets covered by the GPU so when the chipset does need cooling, the fan just sucks already hot air down from the GPU trying to cool the chipset, obviously having somewhat of a reverse effect, a way around this is to get a riser cable and vertically mount the GPU away from the chipset fan.

As for the audio, im using a soundblaster AE-5 and have my cases front audio connectors plugged into the card with the on-board disabled, I did try the on-board out once, and although people will tell you the Realtek is a great audio chip, the differrence is very noticeable between the on-board and the creative, I went straight back to my creative, I think the on-board was only used for about 5 mins, and most of that was spent trying to get the drivers to work.....on that note, you must use the drivers supplied on the CD with the board in order to use the Nahimic software, then you can update, usually I would tell people to just get the latest driver from the Realtek site, but this doesnt work in this boards case.

 

[ik9000]

hi everyone, new to OCuk. I've been looking a lot at this board and was surprised when a similar thread I started in my usual forum didn't get any responses. Glad to see there is somewhere where people are still interested in this stuff.

On 4 sata ports. WTF? I think it's because on the ACE the error readout is directly below and they didn't have room. On the unify it's down the bottom as they ditched the (slightly useless IMO) overclocking dial. That leaves space for additional SATA ports but I reckon they didn't put them in as it would make the ACE look bad. Shame. Note as others say the Aorus Master has 6 but two become inactive if third NVMe is installed. The Godlike (6 SATA) and Asus boards (8SATA) do not have this limitation.

Another thing to note on both the Unify and ACE is that the two PCIe4x1 slots cannot both work simultaneously. Only one can be used at a time. Now if they put switching on those, why not do what Gigabyte did with the AM and make the SATA and NVMe toggle similarly. When I can finally afford lots of NVMe I will mind less the lack of SATA ports. For the near future however I need more than 4. I have already bought some PCIe to SATA controller cards to mitigate. I'm now just trying to work out which X570 to go for.

Why they dropped the RAM slot reinforcement IDK but it's a shame. I've also read comments in youtube threads of people moaning that the RAM clips and PCIe slot clips are very soft/breakable. Not enough trend to be sure, but worrying if true.

The heatpipe is one I'm not sure of. Downside less route for heat from chipset so probably means fan kicks in sooner. Upside is indepence from other heatsinks. Without the fan shroud and chipset fan there are four holes in the mobo. We just need someone enterprising to fab up a custom riser heatsink, an AIO, or a waterblock to utilise those holes and job done. I would pay good money to not be dependent on a mobo chipset fan that if it wears out means the rest of the mobo is junk. Especially when it's a £300 mobo.

Lack of intel LAN? Not the end of the world, but given the choice I'd take it of course.

Other thing I noticed was the lack of Audio area shroud. Does this matter/do anything in reality on the ACE?

Lastly, to the person who said they have the ACE - how much of the VRM, chipset and audio shrouds are metal vs plastic? Are the NVMe covers metal?

 

[TrM]

@ik9000

the ASUS motherboards only have 2x nvme m.2 slots that why they don’t have the same limitations though the x570chipsets. It’s a X570 limitation that having 2 x m.2 streght to the cpu and 1m.2 goes though the chipsset X570 motherboards have same limits as each other. Same with the extra pci expres x4 at the bottom also runs though chipset so they all suffer the same problems

god like have extra controllers to get around limitations though at the launch price the god like was so expensive the money had to go some ware hehe

 

[ik9000]

I don't think the Godlike has fewer limitations, they've just divided up the lanes differently. For example, no PCIe4x1 on Godlike, just a switch to convert 8x8 to 8x4x4 from the CPU PCIe4x16. That leaves room for 2 extra SATA ports at full speed, hence 6 SATA on the godlike vs 4 on the ACE. Both have 3 NVMe on the board. Agreed that ASUS have 8 SATA because only 2 NVMe, and some of their boards even gimp the 2nd NVMe for good measure. Not ideal.

The other downside of the ASUS boards is no PS/2. As someone still running win7 and other legacy stuff that occasionally offers benefits. Granted that is an infrequent case, but you know. That or a £20 PCIe controller card. £20 here, £20 there... all adds up eventually.

 

[Jamin280672]

@ik9000

the ASUS motherboards only have 2x nvme m.2 slots that why they don’t have the same limitations though the x570chipsets. It’s a X570 limitation that having 2 x m.2 streght to the cpu and 1m.2 goes though the chipsset X570 motherboards have same limits as each other. Same with the extra pci expres x4 at the bottom also runs though chipset so they all suffer the same problems

god like have extra controllers to get around limitations though at the launch price the god like was so expensive the money had to go some ware hehe

There is no limitations on the nvme drives anymore now that the chipset provides 20 full speed PCI-e lanes too, just make sure you set in the bios to use GEN4 link between the CPU and the Chipset as they are both Gen4 components....to get the most bandwidth, heres my 3 Samsung evo plus 250gb drives in RAID0, thats for OS and Program files, I have a 1tb Samsung Evo 850 SSD for games and a Seagate mechanical 8TB for everything else like music, movies, pictures, backup's etc etc, so im just using 2 SATA ports.

The CPU only supplies 24 PCI-e lanes, 16 to the 1st GPU slot which get split in half to 8/8 each if using 2 GPU's, 4 to the first nvme slot and the other 4 are for the link between the CPU and chipset, but here's the trick, people ask how can those 4 lanes allow for 2 nvme drives, sata drives, PCI x1 slots etc, well it doesnt work that way, those 4 lanes from CPU to chipset are used as bandwidth instead, and so you now get in GEN4 mode about 32mb/s of bandwidth, well 2 GEN4 nvme drives only use about 10mb/s of that, GEN3 nvme drives only use about 6 or 7 mb/s of that, sata drives are like 0.6mb/s and thats how it all gets crammed in there without bottle-necking.

The picture below ive tested for myself by setting the link to GEN3, and I get half of those speeds, I self created a bottle neck.

 

[TrM]

There is no limitations on the nvme drives anymore now that the chipset provides 20 full speed PCI-e lanes too, just make sure you set in the bios to use GEN4 link between the CPU and the Chipset as they are both Gen4 components....to get the most bandwidth, heres my 3 Samsung evo plus 250gb drives in RAID0, thats for OS and Program files, I have a 1tb Samsung Evo 850 SSD for games and a Seagate mechanical 8TB for everything else like music, movies, pictures, backup's etc etc, so im just using 2 SATA ports.

The CPU only supplies 24 PCI-e lanes, 16 to the 1st GPU slot which get split in half to 8/8 each if using 2 GPU's, 4 to the first nvme slot and the other 4 are for the link between the CPU and chipset, but here's the trick, people ask how can those 4 lanes allow for 2 nvme drives, sata drives, PCI x1 slots etc, well it doesnt work that way, those 4 lanes from CPU to chipset are used as bandwidth instead, and so you now get in GEN4 mode about 32mb/s of bandwidth, well 2 GEN4 nvme drives only use about 10mb/s of that, GEN3 nvme drives only use about 6 or 7 mb/s of that, sata drives are like 0.6mb/s and thats how it all gets crammed in there without bottle-necking.

The picture below ive tested for myself by setting the link to GEN3, and I get half of those speeds, I self created a bottle neck.

i was talking about the chipset x570 limits not pci lanes though or thats the point i was trying to get across.

on the msi ace motherboard or to my understanding that the final pci express slot and 3rd m.2 slot go though the x570 chipset and not stright though the lanes to the cpu hence why the chipset X570 has lmits with sata ports and 3rd m.2 and the fact that all pci slots can not be used at the same time I mean the last pci full sized pci-e slot at the bottom

 

[Jamin280672]

i was talking about the chipset x570 limits not pci lanes though or thats the point i was trying to get across.

on the msi ace motherboard or to my understanding that the final pci express slot and 3rd m.2 slot go though the x570 chipset and not stright though the lanes to the cpu hence why the chipset X570 has lmits with sata ports and 3rd m.2 and the fact that all pci slots can not be used at the same time I mean the last pci full sized pci-e slot at the bottom

But it comes down to PCI-e lanes

Only the 1st nvme slot and top 2 GPU slots run direct to the CPU, thats your 20 lanes gone.

Everything else on the ACE runs via the chipset, SATA ports, 2nd and 3 nvme slot, bottom x16 slots which is wired for only x4 and your x1 slots, all via the chipset.

This is how most boards do it, ASUS like to do things a little differently, I dont quite understand how they do it

 

[TrM]

But it comes down to PCI-e lanes

Only the 1st nvme slot and top 2 GPU slots run direct to the CPU, thats your 20 lanes gone.

Everything else on the ACE runs via the chipset, SATA ports, 2nd and 3 nvme slot, bottom x16 slots which is wired for only x4 and your x1 slots, all via the chipset.

This is how most boards do it, ASUS like to do things a little differently, I dont quite understand how they do it

it does help on asus they only have 2 m.2 slots though. and only 2 pci-e slots as well thats asus c8h vs msi x570 ace though going though the chipset. msi x570 has 1 extra m.2 and 1 extra pci x4 slot

but i was only stating about its x570 limits becouse there is a lot more information out there about how the chipset works then pci lanes etc if you look at the marketing slides https://gyazo.com/7130323fa0a30cf553a40d6cd2a23efd makes it easier for people to understand or atleast i think it does

 

[Jamin280672]

it does help on asus they only have 2 m.2 slots though. and only 2 pci-e slots as well thats asus c8h vs msi x570 ace though going though the chipset. msi x570 has 1 extra m.2 and 1 extra pci x4 slot

but i was only stating about its x570 limits becouse there is a lot more information out there about how the chipset works then pci lanes etc if you look at the marketing slides https://gyazo.com/7130323fa0a30cf553a40d6cd2a23efd makes it easier for people to understand or atleast i think it does

Yeah that makes sense, but that slide talks exactly about PCI-e lanes and how they are used and the options each board manufacturer can choose to use the lanes on.

Straight away at the beginning of that slide over by the CPU you can see what MSI chose to use, 20 for the GPU and chipset downlink, then is says "Pick One" they went for 1 x full speed nvme drive, the other options are 2 half speed nvme drives only running at 2x or 3rd option is 2 sata ports and 1 nvme half speed drive, forget the USB bit, that has its own controller in there.

Other limitations are due to the lack of lanes, ie, you wouldnt loose a PCI-e x1 slot if there was just 1 or 2 more lanes, I guess those 2 slots on the ACE are linked together which is why you only get to use 1 or the other, but at the same time, you could just as easily put a PCI-x1 device in the bottom x16 slot.

 

[apostolis_kt]

it does help on asus they only have 2 m.2 slots though. and only 2 pci-e slots as well thats asus c8h vs msi x570 ace though going though the chipset. msi x570 has 1 extra m.2 and 1 extra pci x4 slot

but i was only stating about its x570 limits becouse there is a lot more information out there about how the chipset works then pci lanes etc if you look at the marketing slides https://gyazo.com/7130323fa0a30cf553a40d6cd2a23efd makes it easier for people to understand or atleast i think it does

One thing I don't understand from the Unify is the amount of USB x10Gbps based on the screenshot there should be a lot more or am I missing something?