AMA MSI Alder Lake Z690 Motherboard AMA and Giveaway

[mattkiss]

Does MSI plan on releasing a Thunderbolt 4 expansion card compatible with the Z690 Carbon? If so, will it have a PCIe 4.0 x4 lane interface?

 

[Uh_tib02]

With any Intel processor, power delivery is/are a key component(s). What has MSI done to separate themselves from the pack?

 

[nimbulan]

Does MSI have any plans to add any new components to their product lineup in the near future (for example, RAM)?

 

[MSIDavY]

Does MSI plan on releasing a Thunderbolt 4 expansion card compatible with the Z690 Carbon? If so, will it have a PCIe 4.0 x4 lane interface?

Hi mattkiss,
There is no plan to release a Thunderbolt expansion card compatible with MPG Z690 CARBON WIFI.

Onboard Thunderbolt 4 will be limited to ACE and mini ITX UNIFY.

With any Intel processor, power delivery is/are a key component(s). What has MSI done to separate themselves from the pack?

Within the Z690 high-end segment, VRMs from both MSI and our competitors are so overspec'd that we have to bring up other features and specs to differentiate ourselves. Memory overclocking capabilities are exceptionally good as a result of DIMMs attached using SMT, tabbed memory trace routing, and a dedicated in-house memory OC lab that takes validation very seriously.

The entry-level Z690 segment is perhaps the most interesting because MSI has probably taken the fewest tradeoffs. Our MAG Series and PRO Series motherboards have both adequate VRMs and stable memory overclocking. I was personally rather surprised to learn that several of our competitors' entry-level Z690 motherboards have trouble with XMP, DDR4 overclocking, and/or DDR5 overclocking.

 

[MSIDavY]

Does MSI have any plans to add any new components to their product lineup in the near future (for example, RAM)?

Hi nimbulan,

We recently added M.2 SSDs to our product lineup. We do have something rather unexpected planned for reveal during CES.

 

[Greg_Da_Bomb]

Hi, the new Z690 Motherboards from MSI look bulletproof and appear to be platforms clearly designed for gaming - which is awesome as I'm a gamer, but has MSI thought about integrating tech into their motherboards that are more relevant to streaming as more and more of us are streaming nowerdays for example encoding or capture hardware?

 

[sorrowful1ne]

Newbie here, given that DDR5 ram is in a shortage, is this motherboard compatible with DDR4 ram even though it would be slower as a result?

 

[MSIDavY]

Hi, the new Z690 Motherboards from MSI look bulletproof and appear to be platforms clearly designed for gaming - which is awesome as I'm a gamer, but has MSI thought about integrating tech into their motherboards that are more relevant to streaming as more and more of us are streaming nowerdays for example encoding or capture hardware?

Hi Greg,

Encoding is mostly dependent on the CPU and the motherboard just provides compatibility and expandability between attached devices.

Capture hardware is still niche despite there being more streamers. Software capture is quite good as long as the CPU is powerful, thus there has been virtually no need to integrated capture hardware onto the motherboard. In the past, MSI allowed Xsplit to advertise their software capture software to motherboard purchasers.

Newbie here, given that DDR5 ram is in a shortage, is this motherboard compatible with DDR4 ram even though it would be slower as a result?

Hi sorrowful1ne,

DDR4 and DDR5 are not cross-compatible because they handle data transmission and power regulation differently.

Thus a motherboard that is compatible with DDR4 is not compatible with DDR5.

A motherboard that is compatible with DDR5, is not compatible with DDR4.

There are no motherboards that are compatible with both at the same time.

We have Z690 motherboard models that can only work with DDR4 or can only work with DDR5, but have similar names. Thus, you will need to check the model name and specifications to confirm compatibility.

 

[SHaines]

Thanks for the questions, folks!

Special thanks to MSI for putting on the AMA and giveaway. Don't forget to get entered for the giveaway, if you're in the US.