With the Intel Core X series finally being revealed earlier last week, we knew it wouldn’t be too long before the news started to flood in from companies looking to use these chips. One of the latest companies to come forward and announce something is MSI. They will be releasing a trio of motherboards based on the existing X299 chipset that will be perfect companions for Intel’s 10th Generation X-series processors.
What Did We Get To See?
MSI has been releasing a wide variety of products this last month but consumers looking to build systems with the latest hardware will be especially excited to see what these three motherboards have to offer.
The three motherboards that were unveiled all seem to have one thing in common – they are geared more towards the professional and creator market. The three motherboards in question are the Creator X299, the X299 Pro 10G, and the X299.
MSI Creator X299 Motherboard
The first motherboard to talk about is the exciting MSI Creator X299. This will be an all-black color scheme model, but will still integrate a couple of RGB features for those who can’t go without.
This board will use a 12-phase IR Digital VRM with 90A power stages, alongside this will be an LGA 2066 socket that is powered by three 8-pin connectors. There are also eight DDR4 DIMM slots that can support up to a whopping 256 GB of memory with speeds of up to 4266 MHz. This will definitely cater to users who require a staggering amount of power from their systems.
A more detailed list of the specifications is as follows:
- Supports Intel® Core™ X-series Processors 10000/9000/78xx (above) series for LGA2066 Socket
- Supports DDR4 Memory, 8 DIMMs, Quad Channel Max Frequency DDR4-4266+(OC)
- More Powerful than Enough: dedicate 12 phases 90A digital power to CPU, with an all-aluminum design
- More Efficiency for Data Transfer: 10G LAN + Intel® Gigabit LAN with Intel® WIFI 6 and bandwidth management
- More Compatibility for Storage: 7 x Turbo M.2 with M.2 XPANDER-AERO, 1 x Turbo U.2
- More Flexibility for Temperature Control: Full fan control with 8 PWM fan headers and 1 dedicated thermal sensor
- Lightning USB 20G: Powered by ASMedia ASM3242 USB 3.2 Gen2x2 controller, offers the fastest USB speeds with stability.
- M.2 Shield Frozr: Strengthened built-in M.2 thermal solution. Keeps M.2 safer and faster
- Core Boost: With premium layout and full digital power design to support more cores and provide better performance
- Triple 8 Pin Power Supply: By providing triple 8 pin connectors to ensure adequate power supply to unleash ultimate multi-core CPU performance
- Mystic Light: 16.8 million colors/ 29 effects controlled in one click. Mystic Light Extension supports RGB, Rainbow and Corsair LED strip
- Audio Boost 4 with Nahimic: Reward your ears with studio grade sound quality
- DDR4 Boost with Steel Armor: Fully isolated, shielded and optimized DDR4 PCB design to give your DDR4 memory a performance boost
- Multi-GPU: With Steel Armor PCI-E slots. Supports up to 4-Way NVIDIA SLI™ & 4-Way AMD Crossfire™
- THUNDERBOLTM3: Exclusive expansion card offering dual DisplayPort and dual Thunderbolt 3 for the full 4K video experience.
MSI X299 PRO 10G and MSI X299 PRO Motherboards
Moving on from the X299, we have the Pro lineup of motherboards. These will exist in the form of the X299 PRO and the X299 PRO 10G. These two boards are similar in a lot of ways, one of which is the large aluminum heatsink which cools the 8 Phase VRMs. We can also see that the CPU socket will be powered by dual 8-pin connectors and know that these motherboards will support up to 256 GB of RAM with speeds of up to 4200 MHz.
As with the X299, details on MSI’s websites give more of an in-depth look at the two boards. Details of which can be found on the X299 PRO page and the X299 PRO 10G page.
We can see that when it comes to expansion, the motherboards will feature three PCIe 3.0 x16 slots and two M.2 slots that come along with the M.2 Shield Frozr heatsink. We will also get two USB 3.2 front panel ports, a Type-C USB 3.2 front panel header along with an additional two USB 2.0 front panel ports. One of the main differences between these two boards is that the 10G PRO has an add-in-card powered by the Aquantis AQC107 controller.
What About The Price?
With the impressive amount of features and options these three motherboards offer, we look forward to hearing what the official price will be. There is some speculation that these boards will be priced around the $250-$200 range with the 10G model being priced slightly higher. This comes as no surprise with the potential options these motherboards will give consumers.