MSI has released its newest motherboard, the MSI MEG X570 Unify. The MEG X570 Unify is a brutalist, high performance, no frills affair, offering the range of features you would expect for a high end motherboard with a design aimed at ease of assembly and functionality over aesthetics.
The most striking thing about the MEG X570 Unify stylistically is that is isn't trying to do much stylistically. There are no RGB options on the board, no big bold splashes of color, it's all black and that's that. More importantly there isn't a sort of reversal of more gaudy design philosophies. This isn't a stroppy Goth of a motherboard rebelling against its disco-styled peers instead this is a design that simply isn't playing those games. Everything is low-key, low-profile and functional.
In technical terms, it's a socket AM4, X570 chipset motherboard for Ryzen 9 CPUs. Four dual channel RAM DIMM slots, maximum memory capacity of 128GB. There are three 16x PCIe 4 slots and two 1x PCIe 4 slots. Also, there are four SATA 3 connections and three M.2 slots. That gives you plenty of room for expansion and more PCIe 4 slots than there are PCIe 4e cards to put in them yet (they are backwards compatible with PCIe 3, of course).
The USB support is new. The MEG X570 Unify carries 6x USB 2.0 connectors, but it also carries 4x USB 3.2 Gen 2 and 3x USB 3.2 Gen 1 connectors. The naming scheme for USBs is a hot mess, suffice to say that 3.2 Gen 2 is 10Gbps connection, faster than SATA 3.
There is a built in 2.5Gbps LAN connection, also built in Wi-Fi with an optional antenna and Bluetooth 5.
Cooling is handled by a combination of heatpipes and aluminum heatsinks for the VRMs and for the M.2 sockets. There is an extended fan-cooled heatsink for the chipset. It's comprehensive but not extravagant. In addition there are five temperature sensors, an AIO pump header, CPU fan header and five system fan headers.