Introduction

Hot off the heels of our review of the Z890 version of this board and in case you’re considering one or the other, we’re checking out the MSI MAG B860 Tomahawk Wi-Fi too. While it has also received a price cut in recent weeks, it still retails at many outlets for just $10-20 less than its Z890 sibling, but has fallen elsewhere to just $200, down from closer to $300 even as recently as the beginning of the year. The Z890 model’s similarly huge price cut not long after the launch of Arrow Lake means that there are question marks over whether the board we’re looking at today is actually cheap enough, given stiff competition.

Dipping down to a B-series chipset means you lose the ability to overclock, and with Intel’s Core Ultra CPUs this has been one way to boost their mediocre performance. With the CPUs offering low operating temperatures, overclocking has been relatively fruitful. Even if you don’t plan on doing so now, having the option to in future is always useful, especially for the sake of what can be as little as $10-20.

There are some other reasons too as there are quite a few features missing here or downgraded compared to the Z890 model. There are fewer fan headers, ALC897 audio compared to ALC1220, fewer Thunderbolt 4 and M.2 ports, and we’ve even found some cutbacks in the BIOS and fan control too. This could be an occasion where opting for Z890 might actually make financial sense even if you don’t plan on overclocking your Arrow Lake CPU.

Of course, we have a few other B860 motherboards to compare it against too. The ASRock B860 Steel Legend Wi-Fi picked up our Editor’s Choice award thanks to an impressive set of features for just $200, and also has RGB lighting and a snazzy white color scheme, handling our Core Ultra 9 285K perfectly well.

Specifications

Latest GPU Drivers