Having a good motherboard is paramount to your experience as a gaming enthusiast; this is a universal truth. What you get is what you pay for is another. In the instance with the MSI MAG X870 TOMAHAWK WIFI motherboard, I not only find this to be an absolute joy of a motherboard, but worth its price tag.
Designed for AMD’s Ryzen 9000 series processors, the TOMAHAWK laid the foundation for the rest of my build, giving me access to plenty of options with very little complaints from me, if any. So, what makes this a great motherboard? Let’s find out.
As mentioned, the TOMAHAWK is designed for the higher-end gaming enthusiast. Someone who is looking for power balance, extra connectivity, and even deeper troubleshooting capabilities.
The layout of the motherboard is almost perfect in my book. Every little interface and header are placed neatly in respective areas. Starting with the top left side we have two 8-pin CPU connectors which are easily accessible even if your motherboard is already within the case. Along the top right, leading around the corner we have a few 4-pin fan headers that eventually lead to the full right side, giving us MSI’s EZ LED troubleshooting tools.
First and foremost, MSI’s layout and overall design is great. My installation from the box to the case was incredibly smooth. I’ll even go as far as to say that this is the first motherboard that didn’t require me to move around over the standoffs to get the best positioning. For some reason, other manufacturers’ motherboards felt a bit awkward at times to fit in perfectly.
The TOMAHAWK has some heft to it thanks to the enlarged heatsinks found on the VRM and over the four M.2 interfaces. The heatsinks themselves aren’t too big, which is great! I have been connecting cables and then routing them through the rest of the case once I install the motherboard, but in this particular scenario, I had my PCIe cables reversed while the motherboard was already inside. Luckily, I was able to finagle my sausage-like fingers through the cutout and unplug the connector, reversing the cables to the proper orientation. This was only able to happen because the heatsink’s size isn’t massive beyond reason.
Interface Capabilities
As for the M.2 interfaces, there are four of them. Right under the main VRM heatsink, you’ll find a prominent and long M.2 heatsink which are followed by three others which are numbered to help with identifying which interface is which. Positions one and four both offer a unique mechanism that not only keeps the heatsink secured, but it does so without any screws. A pressure mechanism keeps the M.2 SSD in place while the heatsink secures into a latching position.
Interface-wise, we are a bit all over the place as positions one and two are directly tied to the CPU, giving you up to PCIe 5.0 speeds when paired with Ryzen 7000 and 9000 series processors. Positions three and four are tied to the X870 chipset, giving them up to PCIe 4.0 speeds.
There are three expansion slots with the top one supporting PCIe 5.0 x16 interfaces, great for the much-rumored next-generation graphics cards. Still, it supports cards like the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 easily and hasn’t impacted my performance by much, if at all. I can’t say that I am holding this motherboard to the fire here, because overall I am very happy with how it handles my GPU.
Two additional slots tied to the CPU are also available, a PCIe 3.0 x1 and PCIe 4.0 x4. I rarely use additional slots, so in this case, it is nice to have, but not completely necessary. I know these kinds of interfaces are designed to fill out the board more, or at least present the option to you if you ever connect a device to your system.
Connectivity Options
Here is where I was most excited. I have a lot of peripherals, from my keyboard and mouse to my Elgato Stream Deck; my computer area is chock full of various devices that I might not always use.
We have four USB-A 2.0 ports, suitable for your low-powered devices, such as your mouse and keyboard. We have three USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports and two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, giving you up to 5 and 10 Gb/s data transfer speeds, respectively. Additionally, we get a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port and two USB4 ports which supports massive 40 Gb/s data transfer speeds; ideal for devices like storage arrays. The TOMAHAWK also comes with your 3.5mm mic in and audio out jacks as well as your optical S/PDIF out.
Additionally, we get Wi-Fi 7 functionally for wireless networking and a 5 GbE LAN port, both offering incredibly fast speeds. Granted, your speed will be determined by your router and overall bandwidth usage. Despite that, my games downloaded quickly without hiccups.
There is also an HDMI for CPUs that leverage integrated graphics. But most importantly there are two buttons, Flash BIOS and Clear CMOS. Both of these functions are imperative to builders who may be tinkering around with their system often. Flash BIOS is a great tool to keep your system updated while the Clear CMOS just resets the CMOS instead of trying to remove the pesky battery or hitting the appropriate headers with a screwdriver.
Overall, the back panel is a full spread, giving me some of the best utility I have ever seen in a modern motherboard. It’s vast and the built-in panel made it easy to install in my case.
Of course, the back panel isn’t the only place for connectivity. There are a ton of internal connectivity headers for your front panel and other internal devices. You get two USB 2.0 connectors and two USB 3.2 Gen 1 headers, both supporting four ports in their respective speeds. You also get a single USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 front panel port that also supports up to 27W of Power Delivery, great for charging devices and keeping equipment powered up while in use.
Additionally, you get your RGB LED connector and three 3-pin A-RAINBOW V2 ARGB LED connectors to add a sense of style to your case or fans or lighting strips. 
Performance
While the TOMAHAWK is an impressive piece of hardware, it is time to look at how this runs, and it’s pretty good. I am using the AMD Ryzen 7 9700x processor, 32GB of DDR5 RAM operating at 6400 MHz, an MSI NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070, along with two 2TB SSDs, all powered by a Corsair 1000W PSU.
First, to get one of the negatives out of the way quickly, the startup is rather slow. Going from the button press to seeing the Windows 11 lock screen takes a bit more time than I’d like. I’m hoping with various BIOS updates that we see an improvement here.
Besides that, the system runs quite nicely. DDR5 Memory runs pretty efficiently, handling my multitasking capabilities quite easily. Thanks to the PCIe 5.0 CPU layout, I was able to transfer about 350GB of files from one PCIe 4.0 SSD to a PCIe 5.0 SSD in as little as three and a half minutes.
I’m also experiencing great performance with the RTX 4070 GPU, which should be a given since it runs along the PCIe 5.0 interface; but we will cover the raw performance of that GPU in a dedicated review later.
Connectivity-wise, we have an interesting design feature here, the right hand of the motherboard places various connectors at the right angle, running parallel to the board. This makes it easier for builders who use dual-chamber cases to slink their cables in with little wire mess. I like it, but if you have the same case as me, the NZXT H510 Flow, you’ll find it kind of difficult to move the cables around to fit in properly because of that shielding part.
I also want to touch on the BIOS itself, which does the job. Some important parts like enabling ReBar can be a bit difficult to find, but other than that I think it does the trick when you’re looking for various settings and hardware tuning. I don’t overclock my components or play around with electrical layouts, but those options are pretty easy to find and are quite easy to use if you know what you’re doing.
I know I touched on the installation process and I have to say it was quite smooth. I didn’t have any issues when it came to plugging in devices or figuring out where certain headers were. I will say that MSI didn’t package a user manual with the TOMAHAWK so I had to find it online through the product page. That being said, it did clear up any confusion I had about interface layout. Another minor complaint is that the RGB header for my CPU fan was located at the bottom of the motherboard, but luckily the cable reached my splitter, so now I do have a fully functional and illuminated CPU fan.
Conclusion
That being said, for the gaming and building enthusiast, the TOMAHAWK is a wonderful motherboard that I really like. From the performance (when it’s running) to the black and green motif. Plenty of options available for builders and there are a ton of troubleshooting components that really lays the groundwork for testers and those who like to benchmark hardware.
I know that right now the X870 chipset is in an awkward position thanks to the lack of proper updates from Microsoft, which places buyers between a rock and a hard place. Sure, it’s very useful and has a ton of neat features, most of which I will use over time. It’s a step above the average consumer motherboard and could promise longevity as updates are delivered. With the rumored Ryzen x3D chips on the horizon, it can be difficult to consider this board right away, but when those chips do become available then it is a no-brainer.
Retailing at $299.99 USD, I’ll say that I am kind of surprised here. As I said, troubleshooting features like the LCD display are not often seen outside the top-tier motherboards. The amount of ports and connectivity options here are so vast that I am genuinely impressed. At one point, I couldn’t really recommend MSI, but between this motherboard and their RTX 4070, I have to say that I see the light and I am way more open to suggesting MSI motherboards over my previous manufacturer allegiance.
