MSI Teases Its Upcoming X99 Gaming Motherboard
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.
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Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.
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ratchet256 Okay, that rear I/O is sexy. I love that it's all red and black.Reply
Watch the language. - G -
whiteodian 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?Reply -
delazaren ReplyThe 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. -
whiteodian ReplyPersonally 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. -
hardcore_player 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 ......Reply