14 DAY TRIAL // After weeks of leaks and reports, companies are finally making the official releases of their motherboards based on the Intel X99 chipset. You know, the chipset that pairs with the Haswell-E CPU collection.
Micro-Star International has five mainboards of this type ready to be bought by whoever has the money and inclination to procure a truly overpowered piece of technology.
They are called MSI X99S GAMING 9 AC, X99S GAMING 7, X99S XPOWER AC, X99S MPOWER and X99S SLI PLUS.
X99 GAMING 9 is the best in the set, with five PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, Audio Boost 2 technology, Killer networking, the Streaming Engine onboard hardware streaming solution (can stream games at 1080p 60 Mbps without impacting FPS) and Turbo M.2.
Turbo M.2 is a term invented by motherboard makers in order to differentiate between M.2 slots wired through SATA (and, thus, limited to 6 Gbps) and those wired through PCI Express.
So, Turbo M.2 slots allow SSDs (provided they, too, are designed for high-speed M.2 interfaces) to communicate at 32 Gbps, which has allowed in the past for 1.8 GB/s and higher transfer speeds.
Quad-SLI and CorssFire NVIDIA/AMD graphics multi-card configurations are supported as well, and you'll even have a PCI Express 3.0 slot left over, plus a mini PCIe slot for good measure. Eight DDR4 slots round up the spec sheet.
The X99 XPOWER AC motherboard is largely similar to the Gaming model, but also has Military Class 4 components, enhancing stability and endurance, for better overclocking feats. You even get an OC Backplate that lets you mount LN2 (liquid nitrogen) pots easier, while Delid Die Guard helps.
In fact, you even have more flexible BCLK adjustments, from 100 / 125 / 167 MHz straps via the dedicated Clock Generator in OC Genie.
The MSI X99S SLI PLUS has only four PCI Express 3.0 slots but otherwise quite similar features as the other two.
As for the X99S MPOWER and the X99S Gaming 7, they are similar to the X99 GAMING 9 and XPOWER AC, but have only four full-size PCI Express 3.0 slots, not five.
All newcomers should become available over the next few days, worldwide. However, companies like ASRock, ASUS and Gigabyte will offer similar products as well, so you might want to hold off on buying one of these beasts until you see just how many options you have, and how they compare. The ASUS X99-E WS Motherboard just came out, for example, and it has seven PCI Express x16 slots if you can believe it.
