Thanks to Tom’s Hardware for spotting this.
MSI’s motherboard list for Arrow Lake-S has leaked. There were 12 new motherboards listed in Z890 and B860 guise. From a SFF point perspective, we have two new mini-ITX options, and two mATX options.
ITX
MSI will be launching the MPG Z890I Edge TI WIFI for their premium board. While the specs are unknown, based on the naming it will likely be similar to the current MSI MPG Z790I Edge WIFI that we have in our long term test. Without rehashing a lot of results, the current Z790I Edge is a good board as a whole, but with two limitations. The first is that the stock power delivery is intentionally limited such that even chips like the Intel i9-13900K only get about 230 watts max out of the box. This can be corrected in BIOS, and the board can feed far more power to Intel’s chips.The second issue is that while 3x M.2 slots are provided, one is sandwiched at under the bottom board stack near the PCI-E slot. It gets hot, and throttles on heat sensitive PCI-E Gen4 and Gen3 M.2 drivers. Otherwise the board has been reliable in testing even in high-heat environments, and consistently performed well. The MSI MPG Z790I EDGE WIFI is currently a SFF.N recommended board for builds, though we still prefer the older design and build of the more expensive MEG Z690I Unify which we use in our test bench and in a long term testing unit with zero issues with both boards.
The second board is the MPG B860I EDGE WIFI. Going off of the MPG B760I EDGE WIFI we should expect 2X M.2 slots, memory speeds above 7200+ DDR5, and 2.5G Ethernet. The current B760I Edge features a 10Gbps USB Type C port but not the 20Gbps port of the premium Z790I Edge.
Both of the upcoming boards seem to support Intel Wi-Fi 7 BE200.
The MSI MPG Z790I EDGE WIFI originally retailed for $330, and the MSI B760I EDGE WIFI retailed for $219.99.
MATX
Fans of the mATX form factor may be a bit disappointed with this release as it doesn’t appear that MSI will be announcing any Z890 powered mATX board. MSI typically designates mATX boards with an “M” following the chipset number in their naming scheme. The only two models that match that are the MPG B860M EDGE TI WIFI, and the MAG B860M Mortar WIFI.
Judging from the previous generation, these boards will likely be offered in both with and without Wi-fi, and in several variants for the MAG models. The MPG B760M EDGE was the more premium board last cycle, and that will likely stay the same this cycle.
MSRP for the MSI MPG B760M EDGE TI WIFI is currently $249.99.
MSRP for the MSI MPG B760M MORTAR WIFI II is currently $199.99
I would not be surprised if we see a slight bump in price for both models based on global inflation, although I’m hopeful we don’t. MSI has typically slotted a “Pro” line board as their budget mid-grade mATX variant, though none are listed at this time.
The Core Ultra 200 chips that will power these boards are currently scheduled for a Q3 (July to September) release date, and I would expect these boards to be correspondingly announced in that time frame, most likely at Computex in early June. While SFF.N won’t be attending Computex this year, we will continue to post the latest updates as they come in.
