MSI Z390-A PRO LGA 1151 Intel motherboard

PRO Series Z390 ATX Board

The MSI PRO Z390-A PRO is an ATX motherboard built on the Intel Z390 chipset with an LGA 1151 socket for 8th- and 9th-generation Intel Core, Pentium Gold and Celeron processors. It provides four dual-channel DDR4 slots supporting up to 64GB of memory at speeds up to 4400 MHz when overclocked. The board includes two PCIe 3.0 x16 slots and four PCIe 3.0 x1 slots for expansion cards.

Target Builders and Limitations

This board suits system builders who need a standard ATX layout with multiple PCIe slots for add-in cards and six SATA III ports for hard drives or SSDs. It also supports two-way AMD CrossFire configurations for multi-GPU setups. Builders requiring multiple M.2 slots or integrated Wi-Fi should look at alternative models as this board offers only one M.2 slot and relies on the Intel I219-V Gigabit LAN for wired networking only.

Single M.2 Slot with PCIe 3.0 x4

The single M.2 slot operates at PCIe 3.0 x4 speeds and supports Intel Optane memory for accelerated storage performance, though a BIOS and driver update is required before using Optane. This lone high-speed slot determines how many fast M.2 drives can be installed directly on the board, making it the key specification for storage-focused builds. Six SATA III ports remain available for additional drives.