MSI Unveils B850I Edge Mini-ITX Board with Wi-Fi 7 & Dedicated PCIe 5.0 SSD Cooling

MSI has expanded its motherboard lineup with the MPG B850I EDGE TI WIFI in the compact Mini-ITX form factor. Built around the AMD B850 chipset, the new board targets high-performance yet extremely compact systems and is compatible with Ryzen 7000, 8000G, and the new Ryzen 9000 processors.

The board's key focus is effective cooling for critical components within the tight confines of the small form factor. Engineers equipped the primary NVMe slot (an M.2 PCIe 5.0 x4 slot connected directly to the CPU) with a dedicated cooling fan. This solution is designed to combat thermal throttling in next-generation high-speed SSDs. For stable CPU power delivery, MSI uses a 10-layer PCB with reinforced copper layers and an 8+2+1 phase VRM design featuring powerful 90A DrMOS components, all cooled by a substantial heatsink.

The board features two DDR5 memory slots with claimed support for speeds up to 8,200 MT/s. Alongside the actively-cooled front M.2 PCIe 5.0 slot, a second M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 storage slot (via the chipset) is located on the rear, along with two SATA III ports. The single PCIe 5.0 x16 slot is reserved for the graphics card. Networking includes a wired Realtek controller supporting 5 Gbps Ethernet and a Wi-Fi 7 wireless module (up to 5.8 Gbps) with Bluetooth 5.4.

The rear I/O panel houses ports including USB-C (20 Gbps), several USB-A ports (ranging from 480 Mbps to 10 Gbps), HDMI 2.1, audio jacks, and Wi-Fi antenna connectors. MSI hasn't officially announced pricing for the MPG B850I EDGE TI WIFI yet. Given that MSI's comparable full-sized ATX board retails for around $310, we can expect the compact version to hit the market priced at approximately $225.