MSI is one of the largest and most influential motherboard manufacturers in the world. MSI recognized the fact that desktop computers in a traditional sense are obsolete and even unnecessary. Many, if not most of the traditional desktop PC's are primarily gaming and high-end workstation builds. It's for this reason that MSI has gone all in on PC gaming and rebranded nearly everything in its product portfolio as "Gaming" products. MSI also took the red and black color scheme started and abused by other brands and made it their own. It's been a wildly successful move for MSI and it's moving lots of product as a result. MSI, like it's competition, makes a wide variety of products beyond motherboards. However, MSI remains known as a motherboard manufacturer first, and everything else second.

Unless this is the first article you?ve come across that mentions socket AM4 motherboards, you probably know that the launch of these motherboards has ranged between problematic and a total disaster. There are lots of reasons for this and tons of articles and posts from people in the industry concerning what went wrong. I?m not going to delve into all that. The short explanation is that AM4 motherboards were launched with AMD's underlying AGESA code not being up to scratch. The software, in its early state is plagued with memory compatibility and other problems. No motherboard manufacturer has been immune to these problems. ASUS, who is normally on top of things before other board makers are, released the worst AM4 motherboard we?ve seen to date. So how are things now? So many months after release, things are in a much better position. Issues with XMP still remain and memory compatibility outside the qualified vendor list or QVL is a crapshoot.