During Computex 2017, MSI has shown their first batch of X299 motherboards for Intel's Basin Falls platform. Meanwhile the company has unveiled their new flagship model. So far there are nine X299 motherboards from MSI but maybe the vendor is going to add even more in future.



Like the same model from the previous generation the X299 XPOWER GAMING AC is based on an E-ATX form factor. The XPOWER GAMING AC also comes with RGB backlight underneath each heat sink and there are steel reinforcements on the PCIe slots. In general the layout is quite similar to the previous model and therefore it has also been equipped with four full-sized PCIe 3.0 x16 slots. With a 44-lane CPU, the motherboard supports x16/x4/x16/x8 configurations.

In the storage department there are ten angled SATA-III ports and one U.2 connector. Apart from that you get three M.2 slots allowing the installation of differently sized SSDs. Each M.2 slot is placed between two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots. Furthermore all slots feature MSI’s reworked M.2 Shield, which now goes by the name FROZR heatsink. In addition to the three 32 Gb/s M.2 slots (two 110mm and one 80mm), MSI includes a PCIe 3.0 x8 riser card which is compatible with two additional M.2 SSD.

Looking at the area where the I/O connectors are we find a plastic cover with RGB backlight. Since this motherboard is designed for overclockers there are all your usual bells and whistles, such as power and reset button as well as debug LED.

We here at ocaholic are a bit disappointed that MSI appears to have discontinued their “Titanium” design, which was used in the case of the XPOWER as well as MPOWER models. The new X299 XPOWER board is anything but bad looking but we prefer the “Titanium” looks of the predecessor.





Source: MSI