Last year, with the launch of Intel’s 14th-Gen Raptor Lake Processors, the LGA 1700 socket came to its third iteration. This brought a wave of refreshed motherboards, including the MAX series of MSI Z790 boards. In this review, we’ll take a closer look at one such refresh, i.e. The MSI MPG Z790 EDGE Ti Max WiFi motherboard. This new MSI motherboard provides native support for 12th-Gen, 13th-Gen and 14th-Gen Intel chips while offering some additional features over last year’s already top-of-the-line Z790 boards.
Table of Contents
Design
From a visual standpoint, the MSI MPG Z790 EDGE Ti Max WiFi appears nearly identical to its Z790 predecessor. However, a subtle difference emerges in the form of RGB accents on the I/O shroud. As for the I/O, it remains largely unchanged, with the same offerings except for the upgrade to a more modern Wi-Fi 7 (replacing the previous-generation Wi-Fi 6E). Here’s a table that shows all the internal and rear I/O of this MPG Z790 EDGE Ti Max WiFi board.
The amount of given I/O on this board, along with eight SATA ports, is more than sufficient for any modern-day heavy use like gaming, music production or live streaming. Additionally, the tall and wide real estate of this E-ATX board with all of its white shrouds and black PCB, makes it an ideal match for an all-white no compromise gaming/editing PC build. This finally brings us to the specs that we paired this motherboard with. Given below is the component list that we paired this motherboard with for this review.
CPU: Intel Core i9-14900K
RAM: Kingston Renegade Fury 48GB DDR5 @7200MT/s (Dual Channel)
SSD 01: Kingston Renegade Fury 2TB (Gen4 NVMe)
SSD 02: Crucial P1 500GB (Gen3 NVMe)
SSD 03: Western Digital SN550 (Gen3 NVMe)
GPU: MSI RTX 4070 Super Gaming X Slim
PSU: Antec NeoECO NE1000G M (80+ Gold Certified)
Features
The MSI MPG Z790 EDGE Ti Max WiFi packs a punch under the hood. The voltage regulator module on this board provides the CPU with 16 +1 +1 (Vcore+VCCGT+VCCAUX) phase power delivery. which we tested with the i9-14900K and the CPU remained stable for the entire 20 Hour stress load of Prime95. The other notable features of this board are the inclusion of a PCIe Gen5 slot on the top-most M.2 SSD slot which is directly attached to the CPU via shortest lanes possible. Additionally, MSI’s EZ M.2 clips make SSD installation a breeze, requiring no screws or tools. Unfortunately, while double-sided cooling and tool-free installation are included, they’re only available on the top M.2 slot.
MSI has pushed the RAM support on this board to speeds of DDR5 7800+, which is quite impressive. Overclocked RAM with tighter latency can really maximise the performance of any CPU and GPU combination. In our setup, we paired the board with Kingston’s flagship HyperX Fury RAM, which already boasts an XMP profile of 7200MT/s. However, if you choose to opt for more widely used RAM frequencies, you can simply OC those using the Advanced BIOS menu. 
Turning our attention to the BIOS of the EDGE Ti Max WiFi, it arrived with V1.10 out of the box, which I subsequently updated to V1.41. As anticipated, the MSI BIOS interface is intuitive, striking a balance between user-friendliness and powerful tweaking capabilities, enabling adjustments to voltage, latency, frequencies, and more. For those who don’t care for or don’t want to delve into extreme fine-tuning, there’s the MSI EZ Mode. This mode can be used to tune Fan curve, set individual fan speeds, set the Boot Priority, and even dial the XMP modes. Then there’s the Advanced mode which you can enable either by left clicking on the top-middle heading that says “ADVANCED”, or simply by pressing F7. The Advanced BIOS is what you can call the real deal, as here you can tweak your frequencies to finer values, tighten up the latencies, and even enable or disable Hyper-Threading and increase or decrease voltage. Basically, the advanced mode gets you real control of your entire ensemble hardware.
Performance
The PC when fully assembled gave us some impressive figures. Here are the benchmarks that we recorded on the combination of hardware that we used on this MSI MPG Z790 EDGE Ti Max WiFi:
| Benchmark | Scores |
| Cinebench R23 ST Cinebench R23 MT | 2302 39785 |
| Cinebench 2024 ST Cinebench 2024 MT | 135 2182 |
| PCMark 10 PCMark 10 Extended | 9724 13696 |
| Geekbench ST Geekbench MT | 3137 21230 |
| Time Spy Score | 21406 |
| Time Spy Extreme Score | 10631 |
| Fire Strike Score | 41113 |
| Fire Strike Extreme Score | 24914 |
| Fire Strike Ultra Score | 13009 |
In summary, these scores represent peak performance, with the Intel CPU reaching its maximum clock speeds thanks to the inclusion of a 360mm AIO for efficient cooling. Additionally, the newly launched RTX 4070 Super made full use of the topmost PCI-E Gen5 X16 lane on the board, unleashing its full potential. Combined with Gen4 Renegade fast storage and 7200MT/s RAM, the experience was nothing short of exceptional. And for the keen-eyed reader, yes, populating the MC1 (the closest NVMe M.2 slot to the CPU) will indeed cause the PCI-E X16 slot to function as a PCI-E X8. However, with Gen5, there won’t be any bandwidth issues, even for a card as powerful as the 4090, let alone the 4070 Super. So, we’re all good in terms of bandwidth sharing. Furthermore, these benchmark scores, along with gaming deltas, are elaborated upon in our video review of the MSI Gaming X Slim White RTX 4070 Super Graphics Card.
Verdict
The name of this MSI motherboard i.e. MSI MPG Z790 EDGE Ti Max WiFi is quite a mouthful. But when I compare it to other white motherboards I’ve used in the past, it really stands out for its impressive array of features. I‘d go as far as to say that this is one of the finest white Z790 motherboards currently available in India, perfect for your 12th-Gen, 13th-Gen, or 14th-Gen CPU. With awesome I/O, built-in Wi-Fi 7, a user-friendly yet powerful BIOS, and easy tool-free storage installation, the MSI MPG Z790 EDGE Max Ti WiFi might not have real (Ti) “Titanium”, but it (Ti)cks off every other box you’d want from a modern Intel LGA-1700 motherboard. Lastly, if you are looking to upgrade to a new board from your trusty old Z690, or planning to build a new Gaming / Editing rig, this MSI MPG Z790 EDGE Ti Max WiFi, priced at Rs 40,000, can really be worth considering. Moreover, if you’re aiming for a white-themed build, pairing this EDGE Ti Max motherboard with a white 360mm AIO, a white graphics card, and a white cabinet would create an eye-catching and powerful PC setup.
Editor’s Rating: 8
Pros:
- Wi-Fi 7 support
- Striking looks
- Good VRM for flagship CPUs
- 5 SSD slots
Cons:
- Only the top SSD slot gets a tool-free EZ clip.
- No Thunderbolt 4 or USB4 availability.
