Board Layout and Pictures
The MSI MPG X870E Carbon Wifi isn’t MSIs highest-end X870E motherboard, they have the Godlike for that role. But the X870E Carbon Wifi is slotted high up in the product stack and with that it has a premium look with large heatinks covering most of the board. For styling they kept things very neutral with a blacked-out board and all of the heatsinks are black as well. They then just have a few shades of grey used to get the MPG branding all over the board. Where some of the early Carbon boards featured a fake carbon fiber look for that gaming look, this board is simple enough that it could be at home in any style of PC. The only exception to that is the big MSI dragon logo, I know they like to include that but it’s the only thing taking away that simple styling here.
As I just mentioned, in addition to a wide feature set. The heatsinks for a board make or break things both with styling and cooling. The X870E Carbon Wifi has an 18+2+1 DRPS VRM configuration which stands for Duet Rail Power System which is a teamed power stage setup and it supports 110A. With so many they have them packed together all along the left and top of the CPU socket. Both have finned heatsinks right on top of them with the heatsink to the left of the socket being the larger of the two and is handling more of the power stages. Both the top and bottom of the heatsinks have groves in them to get additional surface area. Given the setup I expected the two VRM heatsinks to be tied together with a heatpipe but I don’t see any indication of one so it will be interesting to see if they end up running around the same temperatures. The left VRM heatsink has the rare I/O cover over it at all but that cover is all plastic so if anything it is blocking airflow. A lot of boards have integrated the heatsink to be the cover as well for more surface area, I’m surprised they didn’t do that here. The rest of the cooling on the X870E Carbon Wifi is dedicated mostly to the M.2 slots with a little also for the chipset which is tied into that same setup. There is one independent M.2 heatsink for the top slot, it is low profile and runs from the rear I/O to the memory slots. The other M.2 heatsink is the large heatsink which handles the other three M.2 slots. I will touch on the setup more later on. All of these heatsinks are low profile to not get in the way of PCIe devices like your video card including the chipset heatsink which is on the right side. When you look up under that one I was surprised that MSI has integrated fins on the underside to get as much surface area as possible.
Starting in the top left quadrant, let's check out some of the features visible on the X870E Carbon Wifi. This section is mostly filled with the CPU socket, the VRM heatsinks, and the rear I/O. Like with most boards the X870E Carbon Wifi does still have its CPU power connections tucked up in the corner between those heatsinks and to power everything it has two 8-pin connections. I’m not sure when we went away from it, but I do miss seeing a fan header tucked in this area or right below the rear I/O for when you have a rear case fan to hook up. This view also gives us a peak that behind the rear I/O the VRM heatsink has large fins to get as much surface area as possible.
Where the top left doesn’t have much going on, the top right quadrant always has a LOT going on and that’s no different here with the X870E Carbon Wifi. You have four DDR5 DIMMS. Then above them, there are three 4-pin PWM fan headers. One is labeled for your water pump, one is for a CPU fan, and one is for a system fan. Just around the corner, there is a four which is a second system fan header. With that, the white header is the addressable RGB for your lighting. Then you have the EZ Debug LEDs which let you know what part of the boot stage it is on to help diagnose boot issues. The code display is also right here. Then you get a 24-pin motherboard power connection. Below that is the EZConn connection, specifically the JAF_2 version. This can work with other MSI products like addressable RGB fans or water cooling using the included adapter cable.
For the bottom right quadrant the chipset/M.2 heatsink fills a lot of this area but just above them next to the memory is a push button. That will release the lath for the top PCIe slot to make removing a large video card a lot easier. Up under the chipset heatsink they have hidden a few right-angled connections. You have a 20Gbps USB connection then four SATA ports. Below that are two 5Gbps USB 3.2 connections as well. I’ve also found that these connections can be broken easily are a little stronger when they are right-angled like this. I’ve pulled the plastic right off of the pins with the other configuration. The bottom edge has a backlit power button and a reset button. There are two USB 2.0 headers here. The front panel connection is on the bottom right corner and near that, you also have a small switch that turns the RGB lighting off completely without using any software.
In the bottom left quadrant, our last section the PCIe and M.2 slots take up most of the space and I will get to those in just a second. Along the bottom edge though you have three more 4-pin PWM fan headers for a total of 7. MSI has given the X870E Carbon Wifi a PCIe 8-pin power connection to feed in extra power. Then you have one more addressable RGB header giving a total of two and I was happy to see one legacy 4-pin RGB header as well which all of the other boards I have seen lately haven’t had. There is a thermal sensor plug to add in a probe to keep an eye on somewhere in your PC. Then in the bottom left corner, we have the front panel audio header.
For PCIe and M.2 slots, with this being a full ATX board, the X870E Carbon Wifi is loaded. It has three full-length PCIe slots and four M.2 slots. That said to fit all of those there is some lane sharing taking place. The top two PCIe slots are both PCIe 5.0, at least when using a CPU that supports it. Both have metal shields on them but, interestingly, the shield design is different between the two. Those should give a little more strength to deal with the weight of today's video cards and help block out some interference. The top slot is a full x6 lane slot but the second one, while the x16 length has x4 lanes. Then down at the bottom, the non-shielded slot is a PCIe 4.0 slot with a x16 length and x4 lanes. For M.2 slots there are four in total with the top two being PCIe 5.0 and the bottom two being PCIe 4.0. They all support 2280 and 2260 length drives but the third one down also supports longer 22110 length drives as well. As for the lane sharing, the top two PCIe slots AND the second M.2 slot all share lanes. MSI has a whole table breaking it down but if you are running a 9000 or 7000 Series CPU you get x16 in the top slot if it’s the only one used but x8 when either the second PCIe slot or second M.2 slot are used. If you have an 8000 Series CPU that doesn’t support PCIe 5.0, the top PCIe slot only gets x8 lanes for the 8700/8600/6400 and x4 lanes for the 8500/8300. In the end, you only get three M.2 slots and one x4 PCIe slot unless you want to give up the full bandwidth for your GPU. The best part about this area though is how easy the M.2 slots are to use. Both heatsinks have a nice metal latch on the left side that you push on and the entire heatsink pops off. Then for the drives themselves, MSI has a metal snap on latch that you push down on to release. Not only is it easy to use, but being metal it's solid.
The rear I/O on the X870E Carbon Wifi comes with the shield pre-installed and has a black finish. MSI has also labeled each of the plugs with an easy to read font. Over on the far right, there are three connections for the onboard audio. One is an optical S/PDIF and then you have a microphone in and an audio out and it all runs on the Realtek ALC4080 Codec. Next to that are the two wireless antenna connections for the Qualcomm FastConnect 7800 Wifi 7. Then you get two wired network connections with one being the slower Realtek 8125 2.5G LAN and the second being the Realtek 8126 5G LAN. In the center, there are three large buttons. The left button is for flashing the BIOS, the middle is for resetting the CMOS, and the right button can be set in the BIOS to multiple functions. Over on the left the X870E Carbon Wifi slips in one onboard display connection, an HDMI port but two of the Type-C connections also support DisplayPort over Type-C. Speaking of USB connections the X870E Carbon Wifi is loaded with them. There are a total of 9 Type-A connections and all of those are USB 3.2 Gen 2 which can do up to 10Gbps. There are then four Type-C connections along the bottom. Two are also USB 3.2 Gen 2 but the two on the left are both USB 4 which is four times as fast with support for up to 40Gbps.
The back of the X870E Carbon Wifi has a lot going on, without having anything going on. You can see the flat black finish on the PCB which looks good and near the center they have all of the certification logos printed on it. MSI has warnings where some motherboard standoffs go to make sure you don’t accidentally run them and damage the board. Beyond that, you can see the audio circuitry is mostly isolated except for about an inch in the center.
