The Intel Haswell-E X99 Motherboard Roundup with ASUS, GIGABYTE, ASRock and MSI

MSI X99S SLI Plus Overview

When MSI released shots of the X99S SLI Plus before the X99 launch, most of the comments were centered on one feature: the color scheme. Apparently there is something in the zeitgeist that likes an all-black color scheme, similarly to the popularity of other motherboards in the past but this time catering towards the more budget end of the market. The X99S SLI Plus will be MSI’s cheapest X99 motherboard in the first launch month, aiming at the $230 price point and eager to snap up some sales as a result.

As one might imagine, at such a low price point for X99, the SLI Plus does not come equipped with much in the way of ‘new to MSI’ features. The most poignant part of MSI’s product range is the ‘X99S’ nomenclature. The ‘S’ in that name indicates SATA Express support, and MSI is the only manufacturer actively advertising through the name of the motherboard that it has SATAe support. The state of SATAe as a whole is essentially up in the air right now – there are no consumer drives in the market and we are still a couple of quarters away from enthusiast adoption rather than mainstream adoption. The same could be said for M.2 however SATAe bandwidth must always come from chipset PCIe lanes or a controller powered by PCIe lanes, whereas M.2 can have bandwidth from the CPU PCIe lanes instead.

The M.2 on most of MSI’s X99 motherboards will be powered by four PCI 3.0 lanes from the CPU, giving a potential maximum of 32 Gbps when drives become commonplace. MSI’s motherboards will also come with an OC Engine, allowing for a continuous BCLK adjustment through 100-167 MHz and beyond, claiming lower jitter and power consumption, although MSI is not the only manufacturer to use this technique. As part of the MSI range as well, Military Class 4 and Guard Pro designations are being used, along with ECO Power to disable unused fan headers/PCIe ports to save power.

MSI X99S SLI Plus Visual Inspection

The most notable element of the SLI Plus when taking it out of the box is the color. There is something about a pure black color scheme that will make the modder in me reach for a can of spray paint ready to customize it. It does come across as a little bit odd when a motherboard has such a clean design (note, the reduced size socket to maximize the black color) and come in at the cheaper end of the scale.

The CPU socket uses a design that focuses the connectors to the screws on the back panel, leaving the top of the motherboard free of big metallic bits to keep the continuity of the black color scheme. Unlike the other motherboards in this review, the heatsinks are not connected, relying on surface area for sufficient cooling. Due to placing all the DRAM slots in the black color, to help users place DRAM modules in the right order there is a diagram next to the DRAM.

The motherboard has five 4-pin fan headers, three within easy reach of the socket. One of these is on the left of the DRAM slots, next to the rear panel, with two more headers to the top right of the motherboard in the corner. The other two headers are at the bottom of the motherboard, one on the left and one on the right.

On the right hand side of the motherboard is a USB 3.0 header, with the inside in red indicating the fast-charge nature of the ports coming from it. There is another USB 3.0 header at right angles to the board similar to the SATA ports. Eight of the 10 SATA ports are next, and unfortunately MSI does not indicate which of these are RAID capable – normally I would suggest that either by port color or by name that RAID is easily identifiable, but MSI uses neither. (Actually SATA1-6 is RAID.) The final two SATA ports are at the bottom of the motherboard as part of the SATA Express connector.

The bottom of the motherboard is slightly odd – the front panel headers are just to the left of center rather than being at the far right. For most chassis configurations, the far right position is preferable, but MSI has filled that area with the SATAe connector and two USB 2.0 headers. Above the SATAe connector is a BIOS switch, allowing selection between the two BIOSes. Also along the bottom of the motherboard we have the power/reset buttons, an OC Genie button and the front audio header.

The PCIe layout of the motherboard is ultimately geared towards tri-GPU setups. I say this because in a dual GPU setup, the first two full-length PCIe slots are occupied rather than the first and third, which reduces the airflow between them. The PCIe slots are arranged such that:

40 PCIe 3.0 CPU: x16, x16/x16, x16/x16/x0/x8
28 PCIe 3.0 CPU: x16, x16/x8, x8/x8/x8/x0

This means that for the 5960X and 5930K, the third GPU must be in the bottom PCIe slot, whereas for the 5820K, the third GPU is in the third full-length PCIe slot.

I must offer MSI kudos as they have told me they should be including chipset diagrams in their manuals confirming where the bandwidth of the system goes:

Note that next to the PCIe slots is the M.2 x4 connector which pulls lanes from what would be the final PCIe slot. This means that with a 40 PCIe lane CPU, a user has to choose between tri-GPU (x16/x16/x8) + M.2 x2 from the chipset, or 2x GPU (x16/x16) + M.2 x4. 5820K users will get M.2 x4 in any configuration (x16/x8, x8/x8/x8).

The rear panel is relatively empty, aside from eight of the USB 3.0 ports. We also get a combination PS/2 port, two USB 2.0 ports, a ClearCMOS button, the Intel network connection and gold-plated audio ports from the Realtek ALC892.

MSI X99S SLI Plus Board Features

For $230, X99 does not come with much extra. This is shown by the single network port, no WiFi, and the Realtek ALC892 codec which comes near bottom of the 7 channel audio codecs. MSI has bumped up the USB 3.0 ports to twelve however, using a regular ASMedia controller and a cheaper VIA controller.