Layout

At a first glance the MSI X99A Godlike Gaming leaves a very good impression with its good looking design. The manufacturer decided to go for a combination of black, red and silver, which suites nicely and in the end you get an aesthetic looking product. The layout itself is well thought and there is for example plenty of space around the CPU socket to install large CPU coolers. The fact that there are SATA connectors which have been angled by 90 degrees allows for an easy installation of oversized graphics cards. Especially the "Dragon Armor" is a real eye-catcher and there is even an RGB lighting.





The MSI X99A Godlike Gaming comes with a digital 12 phase power design, whereas those 12 phases are realized with 6 phase doublers from Intersil (ISL6617). Apart from that every single phase received an SFC (Super Ferrite Choke) inductor, which according to MSI is rated at 60A. Furthermore there are 11 330uF Tantalum capacitors and a PWM controller from Intersil (ISL6388).
A quick look at the memory VRM shows MSI is using a PWM controller from Powervation (PV3203). This dual-phase controller is paired up with phases from Fairchild (FDMS3668S).
Overall the X99A Godlike Gaming features a solid power design, which can easily cope with the loads generated by extreme overclocking.





There are eight DIMM-slots on the MSI X99A Godlike Gaming. Officially supported is DDR4 with up to 3400 MHz. There is enough space between the DIMM-slots and the CPU socket which means that you won't run into any compatibility problems with large coolers even when you choose to install RAM with big heatspreaders. Also supported are Xtreme Memory Profiles (XMP) in version 2.0.


On the X99A Godlike Gaming PCH as well as current converters have been equipped with separate cooling blocks. There is a total of four heatsinks covering power design as well as PCH and all of them haven been connected by a heatpipe in order to improve the heat transport.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 15 - UC Bench
Page 2 - Specs and Delivery	Page 16 - Super Pi 1M / 32M
Page 3 - Features	Page 17 - wPrime 1024M Multi Core
Page 4 - Layout	Page 18 - Cinebench
Page 5 - Connectors and I/O	Page 19 - Tomb Raider
Page 6 - BIOS	Page 20 - Metro Last Light
Page 7 - Test setup	Page 21 - Thief
Page 8 - Preview / Gallery	Page 22 - Right Mark Audio Analyzer
Page 9 - 3DMark	Page 23 - BCLK Overclocking
Page 10 - 3DMark 11	Page 24 - Power Consumption
Page 11 - 3DMark Vantage	Page 25 - Performance Rating
Page 12 - PC Mark 8	Page 26 - Price Comparison
Page 13 - SiSoft Sandra 1	Page 27 - Conclusion
Page 14 - SiSoft Sandra 2