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MSI Teases Its Upcoming X99 Gaming Motherboard

By - Source: MSI Facebook Page | B 20 comments

MSI teases its upcoming X99 motherboard on Facebook.

MSI posted a pair of photos on its Facebook page, where it turns out the company was teasing its new X99 board. The board will be known as the X99S Gaming 9 AC, and while no technical specifications have been made available, we are able to see most of what we want to know.

For starters, it looks like the X99S Gaming 9 AC could be an E-ATX motherboard, as it appears a little wider than most standard ATX motherboards. Because we know that X99 motherboards will have the LGA2011-3 socket, we can safely assume that the motherboard has an LGA2011-3 socket, and we can see that wired to this socket are eight DDR4 memory slots. This will allow you to install up to quad-channel memory. PCI-Express expansion is taken care of by five PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots. We also see an M.2 slot between two of these for SSD expansion. For storage we find two SATA-Express interfaces, along with six SATA ports. If the SATA-Express interfaces are unused you’ll have ten SATA ports at your disposal. Peeking further out of sight we do vaguely see dedicated audio hardware as well.

The rear I/O has eight USB 3.0 ports, along with two USB 2.0 pots. For those who still swear by them, a single PS/2 port is also present. Networking is covered by a Killer NIC along with Wireless AC connectivity. Lastly, we find eight-channel HD audio, accompanied by an optical TOSLINK output.

At this point, this is all we know. It will probably be a few weeks before we know more, including info about pricing and availability. The Haswell-E processors are expected to debut sometime mid-September, and we expect to see motherboards to be officially announced simultaneously.

Follow Niels Broekhuijsen @NBroekhuijsen. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.

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  • 5 Hide
    ratchet256 , August 7, 2014 7:46 AM
    Okay, that rear I/O is [removed] sexy. I love that it's all red and black.

    Watch the language. - G
  • 4 Hide
    whiteodian , August 7, 2014 8:02 AM
    The rear I/O is very nice. I like how clean it is except one thing. Do people still use/need the PS/2 port?
  • 0 Hide
    Merry_Blind , August 7, 2014 8:04 AM
    Like others have said, the rear looks great lol
  • Display all 20 comments.
  • 3 Hide
    CraigN , August 7, 2014 8:17 AM
    Are you all saying...you like how it looks from behind!? XD
  • 1 Hide
    junkeymonkey , August 7, 2014 8:24 AM
    asrock claims to be the first

    http://www.asrock.com/news/index.asp?id=2299
  • 1 Hide
    teknic111 , August 7, 2014 8:26 AM
    That's cool, but I'll be getting an Asus Rampage.
  • 1 Hide
    g-unit1111 , August 7, 2014 9:11 AM
    Now that's what I am talking about! That motherboard looks sweet!
  • 2 Hide
    delazaren , August 7, 2014 9:27 AM
    Quote:
    The rear I/O is very nice. I like how clean it is except one thing. Do people still use/need the PS/2 port?

    Personally I use PS/2 keyboard on my main PC. I think they are more responsive and are definitely recognised during all stages of booting up any PC.
  • 2 Hide
    whiteodian , August 7, 2014 10:27 AM
    Quote:
    Personally I use PS/2 keyboard on my main PC. I think they are more responsive and are definitely recognised during all stages of booting up any PC.

    That's kind of what I was thinking, but if I were to go buy a new keyboard and mouse, what is the likelihood that I could even find a ps/2 KB or mouse. Everything seems to be USB for that past 5-6+ years. I did a quick Amazon search and didn't find anything appealing. I work in IT and other than Docking Stations all of our Dell systems have decided to leave that port off since the Core 2 Duo era. We haven't received PS/2 keyboards since the Pentium 4 era.
  • 0 Hide
    hardcore_player , August 7, 2014 11:41 AM
    looks like it's going to be a great year for hardware builders ...what a violent peace of art .. MSI did a great job at least from the looks of the board itself ...can't wait to see the Rampage V ......
  • -2 Hide
    EthanG , August 7, 2014 11:49 AM
    Quote:
    Quote:
    The rear I/O is very nice. I like how clean it is except one thing. Do people still use/need the PS/2 port?

    Personally I use PS/2 keyboard on my main PC. I think they are more responsive and are definitely recognised during all stages of booting up any PC.


    I always use usb>ps/2 when i can. N-key rollover babyyyy
  • 3 Hide
    mf Red , August 7, 2014 12:04 PM

    Quote:
    Quote:
    Personally I use PS/2 keyboard on my main PC. I think they are more responsive and are definitely recognised during all stages of booting up any PC.

    That's kind of what I was thinking, but if I were to go buy a new keyboard and mouse, what is the likelihood that I could even find a ps/2 KB or mouse. Everything seems to be USB for that past 5-6+ years. I did a quick Amazon search and didn't find anything appealing. I work in IT and other than Docking Stations all of our Dell systems have decided to leave that port off since the Core 2 Duo era. We haven't received PS/2 keyboards since the Pentium 4 era.


    PS2 you can press all the keys simultaneously. USB tops out at about 6. Some mechanical keyboards come with PS2 connections.
  • 2 Hide
    g-unit1111 , August 7, 2014 1:10 PM
    Quote:
    looks like it's going to be a great year for hardware builders ...what a violent peace of art .. MSI did a great job at least from the looks of the board itself ...can't wait to see the Rampage V ......


    Yup it is! I purposefully held off Z97 and X79 on my main build to wait for X99 / GTX 880 and I'm thinking the wait is going to pay off, especially with all the sweet hardware that's being revealed in the next couple of months.
  • 0 Hide
    The_Icon , August 7, 2014 3:36 PM
    MSI have come a long long way, I am using their Z87 G 43 Gaming motherboard, I just love it and the board looks awesome as well.
  • 0 Hide
    J Truman Ostler , August 7, 2014 4:46 PM
    I have owned over 7 msi mother boards they are not the best but the are the Longest lasting stable boards out thier , good prices and warrantty too this well be my next board my x59 is starting to show her age peace out
  • -2 Hide
    zanny , August 7, 2014 6:00 PM
    Aren't the Haswell-E chips supposed to come with Iris Pro? Where are the onboard video outs? Not like they didn't have space left on the board.

    It is just useful when debugging OCs and such to have the integrated gpu available.
  • -2 Hide
    KaiserPhantasma , August 7, 2014 7:13 PM
    is it just me or does the board have no HDMI ports?
  • 0 Hide
    Avus , August 8, 2014 6:09 AM
    Quote:
    is it just me or does the board have no HDMI ports?


    do you know this platform (LGA2011) CPU don't have "on-chip" graphics? you have to use discrete graphics.
  • 0 Hide
    Avus , August 8, 2014 6:45 AM
    Quote:
    Aren't the Haswell-E chips supposed to come with Iris Pro? Where are the onboard video outs? Not like they didn't have space left on the board.

    It is just useful when debugging OCs and such to have the integrated gpu available.


    No. Iris Pro is available on Haswell and Broadwell-K.
  • 0 Hide
    KaiserPhantasma , August 9, 2014 6:37 AM
    Quote:
    Quote:
    is it just me or does the board have no HDMI ports?


    do you know this platform (LGA2011) CPU don't have "on-chip" graphics? you have to use discrete graphics.


    goes to show im still "new" to the tech world as I forgot a simple fact for the LGA2011 platform