It's that special time of the year again where hardware manufacturers flock to Taiwan's Computex to display their latest creations. MSI, for one, wants to start this year's event with a bang - and what better way than to display a new top-tier motherboard in the middle of the booth. But then again, calling the MSI MEG X399 Creation a high-end product is certainly an understatement. This motherboard probably belongs in a category of its own.
The MEG X399 Creation, as its name conveys, is a X399 motherboard targeted at the Threadripper audience. The X399 MEG Creation is hard to ignore because of the very aggressive aesthetics and ginormous heatsinks. The size of the motherboard’s heatsinks and the number of components onboard puts the MSI MEG X399 Creation in E-ATX territory. The TR4 socket sits comfortably in the middle of the motherboard sandwiched in between two banks of four DDR4 memory slots. A large L-shaped VRM heatsink sits on the top-left corner of the motherboard to cool its beefy 19-phase digital VRM. Two 8-pin EPS connectors supply ample power to the Threadripper processor to ensure a stable overclocking experience.
Expansion options on the MSI MEG X399 Creation include four PCIe 3.0 x16 slots and a lonely PCIe 3.0 x1 slot. However, the motherboard also excels in the storage department with eight SATA III ports and three M.2 slots. MSI boasts that the MEG X399 Creation supports up to a total of seven M.2 devices. This is possible thanks to MSI’s M.2 Xpander-AERO PCIe add-in card, which converts a PCIe x16 slot into four M.2 slots.
As expected for a product of this caliber, the MEG X399 Creation is equipped with as many as ten PWM fan connectors and three dedicated thermal sensors scattered around the motherboard. In terms of connectivity, the motherboard provides the user with eight USB 3.0 ports, a USB 3.1 Type-A port, a USB 3.1 Type-C port, dual Ethernet LAN ports, two Wi-Fi antenna ports, five audio jacks, an optical S/PDIF out, a reset button, and a power button.
We expect this board to come with an eye-watering premium, but we won't know pricing specifics until later this week. We'll update this article as more information becomes available.
