Mario Bautista
MSI is overhauling the BIOS interface for its new Intel and AMD gaming motherboard designs, and the first preview screenshots look much cleaner and smarter than the company’s previous efforts. The new interface takes over from MSI’s previous Click BIOS 5 layout, and is called MSI Click BIOS X because, as we all know, an X always makes your product look cooler, even if it’s numerically wrong.
The new EFI from MSI will be included with the company’s new X870 boards for both AMD’s Socket AM5 platform, as well as Z890 boards for the forthcoming new Intel Arrow Lake CPUs. Both chipsets are due to launch in the near future, when all the big players will be competing to make the best gaming motherboard in a variety of categories.
The BIOS plays a large role when differentiating between different motherboards, and MSI has gone for a much more modern approach with its new Click BIOS X interface, placing much less emphasis on over-the-top “gamer” styling. I applaud this approach, as too often motherboard interfaces seem stuck in the past, looking like a busy WinAmp skin from the early 2000s with their angled buttons, overly busy screens, and over-the-top icons.
Refreshingly, the new MSI Click BIOS X system, which has been revealed by IT Home, looks neatly laid out, with easy-to-read fonts and straightforward menus. The big icons on the left of Click BIOS 5 (there’s a screenshot below so you can see the old interface, with an analog needle meter for overclocking, a hammer and spanner for settings, and so on, have all gone, as has the overly busy summary at the top, with the key information now neatly presented in the right-hand column.
Then, instead of all the settings being listed in one big section in the middle, they’re laid out in multiple columns. The red and black color scheme has also gone, replaced with a subtler black and brown interface.
Likewise, the boot priority section, where you select the boot order of your storage drives when you switch on your PC, looks much subtler, with a row of small, simple icons along the bottom, rather than the large, more realistic icons that used to be at the top. As with previous MSI EFIs, you still have a choice between EZ and Advanced modes, and the feature set is also familiar.
This includes the Smart button, which enables you to remap your PC’s reset button to perform another task, such as turning the LEDs on and off, or enabling safe boot mode, with another physical Smart button included on the rear I/O panel.
There’s also a neatly-presented Hardware Monitor section, which as on previous MSI EFIs, displays all the fans hooked up to your motherboard, and gives you the temperature, voltage, and clock speed of your CPU, GPU, and RAM. Meanwhile, a Performance Preset feature allows you to quickly enable AMD’s Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) feature on AMD motherboards.
There’s not much new in the way of features here, but I’m loving the look of the new interface. After all, the BIOS defines the ease with which you can set up your PC, and it also gives an impression of the professionalism of the brand. Let’s hope this new interface also makes it to older MSI boards, so you can flash your BIOS and make your EFI look less like it was designed by a teenager in the late 1990s.
If you’re thinking of putting together a new rig based on a new AMD X870 or Intel Z890 motherboard when they’re released, check out our guide on how to build a gaming PC, where we take you through for the whole process step by step.
