MSI had one of the first USB 3.1-supported motherboards in the market, so it's no surprise that the company is continuing the trend of adding USB 3.1 ports to its new motherboards. The company bills the 970A SLI Krait Edition motherboard as the first AMD-based motherboard to support the brand-new USB 3.1 port.
The black-and-white 970A has an AM3+ socket with an AMD 970 and SB950 chipset. Multi-GPU users can utilize the two white PCIe 2.0 x16 lanes for an SLI or CrossFire configuration. The dual-channel, DDR3 memory supports up 32 GB of 2133 MHz RAM.
For storage, the motherboard has six SATA III (6 Gbps) slots and supports RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10. Along with six audio ports, it features a smorgasbord of USB ports with the two new USB 3.1 ports in the rear, two USB 3.0 ports in the front, and support for a total of 12 USB 2.0 ports split between the front and rear. A PS/2 keyboard port, LAN port, and PS/2 mouse combo port round out the rear I/O.
What's interesting is that even with all of these USB ports, none of them sports the new USB Type-C connector, which we've seen on both of the new Asus and ASRock set of motherboards.
MSI has yet to release a price and release date for the board. However, this is a sign that USB 3.1 is adopted more on the latest motherboards. Our initial USB 3.1 test in January showed that the new USB version predictably outperforms its predecessors.
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