This is my Review of the ASUS Rampage V Edition 10 and comparison to the MSI Godlike Carbon, hope it helps. I was in the same boat till recently. I went with the ASUS Rampage V "Black Edition" 10th anniversary over the MSI Carbon for quite a few reasons.
First off, the MSI X99 Godlike Carbon is literally the SAME board as the $70 cheaper X99 Godlike GAMING just with the black carbon finish on it, a couple minor tweaks, and a new Broadwell-E firmware update...that's basically it! The Rampage V Edition 10 however, has MULTIPLE improvements over the Rampage V Extreme and a ton of very useful features!
The Rampage V Edition 10 has
1) a built in i/o shield attached to the board itself, so you don't have to do that annoying popping in process that can dent the shield etc.. (also has a beautiful black i/o shield).
2) Much better (in my opinion) i/o outputs. The MSI Carbon has two USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports (one type a and one type c), and four USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports (all type A) for six total; and two USB 2.0 ports. It has a Clear CMOS button, a PS/2 keyboard/mouse port, Two Killer LAN ports, regular Audio output, a nice 6.3mm audio jack for high quality headphones/speakers, and a two band wi-fi antenna.
The 3.1 support is nice, and surpasses the 3.1 amount on the ASUS but pales in comparison to the overall ports on the Rampage. The Rampage Edition 10 has four USB 3.1 ports (all gen two. And TWO of them are the new Type C, two are type A), along with four USB 3.0 ports and two USB 2.0 ports both that can be used as dedicated Keybot and BIOS trouble bypass ports (Sometimes if the BIOS won't post USB keyboards/mice won't work and if you dont have a PS/2 keyboard you're screwed. This port will work regardless of BIOS errors!) This gives the ASUS a total of 10 USB ports vs 6 total on the MSI. The ASUS also has a Clear CMOS button AND a BIOS flashback button that lets you revert to old version of BIOS if anything goes wrong saving you a TON of time fiddling in the BIOS settings to revert it back; and then has a PS/2 port, standard audio (better quality SupremeFX 2016 too!) and TRIPLE band 2.4 and 5ghz wi-fi antenna! And finally has two Intel LAN ports with a special "teaming" software that will allow you to plug in BOTH of these ports at the same time to your modem together DOUBLING your network speed! This is overall significantly better than the MSI.
3) Now you might notice that i didn't mention a 6.3mm high quality audio jack on the ASUS, which would be disappointing if you had like high quality Sennheiser etc.. $100+ high Ohm headphones or something or a fancy speaker system. BUT! The ASUS comes bundled with the "SupremeFX Hi-Fi" which is NOT just a Gimmick that most people won't use like the OC Panel turned out to be (nice for attaching fans tho, the oc panel i mean lol) The SupremeFX hi-fi is a front mounted 5.25" bay device that goes in just like a disk drive would, and it has a 6.3mm audio jack along with standard size headphone and mic ports, and MOST IMPORTANTLY it uses the Texas Instruments TPA6120A2 Amplifier AND the Sabre ES9018K2M "DAC" (digital analog converter), these are not only FAR better than ANY onboard sound (even the nice SupremeFX 2016) they are better than ANY "gaming" soundcard type device you can buy! The Amp and DAC i mentioned can be found on "headfi.com" where the audiophile guys that are super picky with $2,000 speaker setups go, and even they agree that this amp and DAC chips are BOTH "THE BEST PORTABLE AMP AND DAC YOU CAN BUY" (yes there are better "non portable" ones, but considering you get this amp/dac for FREE and it's as good as a $300+ amp/dac portable combo you should realize this will improve your audio quite a bit in most cases!It can even power up to 600ohm massive headphones! My Sennheiser HD700 $500 headphones are 300ohm and get a NICE sound quality boost on this board!
4) The MSI Godlike Carbon uses Super Ferrite chokes and Hi-C caps on most of the board, while these are OK, the 10K japanese caps on the ASUS surpass it giving better VRM and power phase stability which can improve overclocking somewhat. The Dark Caps used in some places on the MSI are a bit better though, but the ASUS still wins here.
5) The ASUS allows you to do 3 and 4 way SLI on ANY of the PCI x16 slots whereas the MSI Godlike Gaming (and i think the carbon too since it's literally the same board with just a couple tweaks) requires you in certain SLI/Crossfire configs to "skip a slot" like having to do Slot 1 and Slot 3, instead of being able to do Slot 1 and Slot 2 etc.. and the ASUS board has a "2 way and 3 way" crossfire SWITCH on the board which will make the LEDs on the PCI slot latches light up to show you which slot will give your cards the most PCI lanes based on your CPU's available lanes!!
6) The ASUS Rampage Edition 10 has "PCI switches" and "DIMM Switches" which allow you to literally turn on or off EACH PCi slot and EACH RAM Slot just by hitting a switch! So if you want to test a single graphic card when you are using SLI you can turn off the 2nd card without having to remove it or uninstall drivers etc.. just by flipping the switch! Or if you are having RAM errors or problems and suspect a RAM stick is bad, normally like if you had the MSI board you would have to get in your case and REMOVE ALL RAM STICKS except one, and run the 1 hour long "memtest 86" then take that stick out and put a different one in and run the 1 hour test again, and keep doing it over and over for each stick, then test with combinations of 2 sticks, 3 sticks, then 4 sticks etc.. literally spending ALL DAY to find out which stick if bad! With the DIMM switches you can simply flip three switches off instead of removing all sticks and flip the switches back as you finish the test; making it MUCH faster and easier to test for bad memory/ram issues!
7) The ASUS has the same "TUF Armor" that their Sabertooth boards use, on the back and small parts of the front, that protects the PCB from scratching etc.. when you are putting it in the case; MSI has the Carbon Fiber on the front somewhat but no protection for the back of the board.
8) The MSI Godlike Carbon only has Five Fan Headers to attach your fans to; and only TWO of them are 4 pin PWM that let you control the speed! The ASUS has EIGHT fan headers and ALL of them are 4 pin PWM controllable! And one of them is a dedicated "Pump" header that allows control of water cooling pump speeds more effectively, and two of them are "high AMP" fan headers that allow for more voltage and amps maximum so you can get higher max speed out of the fans.
9) The "myth" of the "Killer GAMING Ethernet" MSI has been a big proponent of using the "gamer made" KILLER Ethernet LAN ports on their motherboards. And this board uses the infamous "KILLER DOUBLESHOT X3-PRO" which supposedly "combines your dual ethernet with wi-fi with software putting all your non-gaming traffic on the slower wi-fi freeing up 100% of your faster Ethernet for pure gaming thus increasing gaming online ping speeds and bandwidht etc.." Sounds GREAT right? Except it doesn't work.... Intel LAN Ethernet ports are FAR more stable, with better drivers, and overall faster; this advantage can't be fixed by any software gimmick to combine wi-fi and wired. Plus the ASUS' teaming of the two Intel Ethernet LAN ports will put its speed even higher. Also, the Killer ports are being used by MSI mostly due to being cheaper, and they are cheaper BECAUSE they are slower and ridden with driver issues etc.. Read this article to see why Killer LAN ports are bad: http://www.pcgamer.com/motherboards-with-killer-network-adapters-arent-worth-your-money/
9) The ASUS has more RGB LED lights on it in more areas like the PCI slot latches etc.. and also has higher QUALITY LED implementation as well as a dedicated RGB LED header on the bottom of the board that you can attach a cord to to sync up any LED strips you buy to attach to your case, so they will do the same color and effects that the motherboard lights are doing.
10) MSI has a nice little 1 year subscription to "Xsplit Gamecaster" which is kinda like Nvidia Shadowplay but better, a software to let you record and stream gameplay on twitch etc.. and help edit the videos. However, ASUS pretty much makes up for this by giving you a 1 year subscription to Kaspersky Anti-Virus, AND a 1 year subscription to DAEMON Tools PRO, as well as a free copy of their PC Cleaner software that helps clean junk files etc..
There are many things both boards have that are the same, such as ASUS having their "Safeslot" reinforced steel PCI slot and MSI having their "Steel Armor" slots etc.. but the ASUS Definitely has more features and is the better board in my opinion.
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