MSI X99A Godlike
Even God couldn’t afford this
PRICE $ 799 www.msi.com Yep,
this is officially the most expensive motherboard to ever cross my test-bench, by a good $50 or so. Obviously this means that 95% of you guys won’t be interested in buying it, but you’re probably keen to see how MSI feels it can demand almost a thousand dollars for a motherboard. I know I was. Unfortunately the CPU it’s designed for doesn’t actually exist in stores yet, so this review is going to be based on features, rather than performance.
MSI is aiming this product at upcoming owners of Intel’s brand new Core i7 Extreme Edition CPU, which uses the LGA 2011-3 socket. Those of you with better memories than mine will recall that this is the same socket used by the existing i7-5930K, a six-cored behemoth that came out a couple of years ago. However, the new Broadwell-E chips intended for the X99A are going to up the ante, with an expected core count of – wait for it – ten cores. Each of these is HyperThreaded, making this a potent CPU for software that can utilise so many concurrent threads… which is quite rare, to be honest.
This is referred to as an E-ATX board, but not quite the full sized E-ATX you might expect, as it measures 305mm x 272mm, as opposed to the 305mm x 330mm of the usual E-ATX standard. So it’s a little smaller, but the clever PCIe physical lane layout means you can just squeeze four double-slot graphics cards on it, though you’ll need an E-ATX case as the bottom card will hang past the edge of the motherboard. This is on the proviso that the new Broadwell-E chips deliver up to 40 PCIe lanes, as quadNVIDIA setups require a minimum of 32 lanes – AMD doesn’t have this limitation when it comes to CrossFire.
The sexy black carbon fibre material used in this board’s construction is as unique as it is attractive, while support for eight sticks of DDR4 memory up to a speed of 3400MHz is also great for those who need a maximum of 128GB of memory. There’s super-solid reinforcement throughout, from the PCIe lanes to the memory slots to the coolers over the motherboard chipset, so it won’t warp or break during an Earthquake. Killer’s Wireless AC1535 delivers top-notch Wi-Fi, while DoubleShot pro handles the twin Ethernet ports. I could spend a page talking about the audiophile-grade sound solution but, needless to say, it’s damn good.
Competitive overclockers will appreciate the intricate BIOS, but the lack of an external control box seems an oversight at this price point, as they’re quite common with boards from ASUS. Thankfully all the other OC boxes are ticked, with more PCB layers for better shielding, digital PWM controllers, and a new clock generator that MSI claims delivers better stability during high overclocks. Support for the rather rare U.2 SSD connector is quite unique, though most users will stick with the single M.2 port instead - I’d have preferred to see twin M.2 than the use of the U.2 port.
It’s obvious that this board isn’t for the masses. Instead, it’ll be the kind of product shown off at trade shows, in overclocking competitions, and possibly inside incredibly high-end rendering rigs. For the rest of us, it’s a glimpse at the kind of product that will become affordable five or ten years down the road.