MSI PRO Z790 P

I bought this motherboard for my new server as I wanted to go Intel 13th gen with DDR5.

This motherboard gives you 4 M.2 Nvme slots, a decent assortment of PCI-e ports and a 2.5Gbps Intel NIC.

This motherboard had been running my new server for about 3 months now with 0 issues.

El producto llegó en caja abierta y estaba dañado.

I’ve bult my own PCs for 20 years. This was by far my most difficult build.

My setup:
1. Intel i5 13500 cpu. Has built in GPU.
2. MSI PRO Z790-P motherboard
3. 16GB Crucial RAM DDR5
4. Samsung 990 Pro SSD NVME
5. Corsair 750W power supply (1 12V EPS 8 pin CPU connector)
6. EVGA Nvidia 1660 super video card. I did not install right away as I wanted to install Windows 11 with Intel GPU.

Let me start by saying that the manual is not clear if both EPS 12V 8 pin connectors are needed for CPU. I did some searching and everything I read said the 2nd 8 pin connector is optional unless you overlock. So I used the one EPS connector I have on my existing power supply as I will not be overclocking CPU.

Problem #1 – No video on power up. Moved EPS connector from power 2 position to power 1 position (see photo). Issue fixed.
Problem #2 – Windows 11 install program would crash right away (purple screen). I was using blu-ray disk & drive for isntall. Converted to USB Windows 11 install. Windows 11 able to install until online update step of installation.
Problem #3 – Windows 11 install would crash at update step. I started to give up. As total guess I installed the NVIDIA 1660 super video card. This fixed the issue and allowed me to complete Windows 11 install. I don’t understand why this was necessary but my theory is the single EPS 12V 8 pin connector is not enough power to run the CPU and embedded GPU on the i5 13500.

Bottom line is use 2 EPS 12V connectors on this motherboard.

I used this for my first official ground-up build. I’ve used worked-over used PC’s for years with great results and wanted to do an actual build this time for a Win11-compatible machine capable of light gaming. Here are the steps you should take:
-Install mobo in tower with other components
-Download ALL available drivers (for Win10 or Win11, whichever you install) using another computer and put them on a USB thumb drive
-Power on the machine
-Install Win10/Win11 but DO NOT HAVE A NETWORK CABLE PLUGGED IN (YET)!!
-While in the OS, plug in your USB thumb drive with the MSI drivers and move all of the driver zip files to the new computer, unzip them, and install them; make sure to have your Device Manager open so you can confirm all of the hardware is being detected
-Plug in your network connection (or connect via wifi) so you can access the internet and allow Windows Updates to do it’s thing
-Install your personal stuff (browser, games, files, etc) from your old machine
-You’re done!

The install overall was a breeze. All of the drivers worked and there were no unknown devices showing in Device Manager afterward. I used an old Win7 Pro key I had to activate Win10 and it worked like a charm. I’m just waiting for my GPU before I can start using the new rig full-time and decommission my old desktop. I’m using a Samsung 512GB NVMe as a boot drive and two 3TB HGST HDD’s as slave drives for everything else. I installed an Intel 12th gen I7 and this thing boots in under 10 seconds. 32GB of DDR5 memory as well. All of this in a Rosewill Cullinan blue LED case and an Rosewill ARC750 PSU with a Cooler Master Hyper 212 RGB CPU cooler.

For a first-time real-deal build, this motherboard worked out nicely. I’ll play around with the RAM and CPU overclocking features down the road a bit, but otherwise I’m very pleased with this build!