[section_title title=”Closer Look”]Closer Look
Looking at the X99S MPOWER in all its glory and it is very pleasing on the eyes. The overall black design is nicely complimented by a bit of yellow accenting on the heatsinks, the yellow of course representing the overclocking aspect of the X99S MPOWER.
Starting off with the top half of the board, smack dab in the middle is the LGA 2011-3 socket with 4x RAM DIMMS either side of it which support DDR4 RAM up to 3330MHz(OC). Just above the top heatsink are a 8-pin and a 4-pin power connector to allow for maximum power to the board to help with any overclocking needs and to the very right is the DeBug LED which will give users a unique code they can look up should any problems arise. Also on the right-hand side we can see the 24-pin power connector and front panel USB header.
The heatsinks look a lot nice in person than that of which photos can capture, the top one will do a good job keeping the MOSFETs nice and cool for those long overclocking sessions that will be done on the M99S MPOWER.
On down to the bottom half of the board and this is where most of the fun is going to happen! We can see 4x PCI Express x16 slots that will support quad CrossFire or SLI, in between some of those are the 2x PCI Express x1 slots and the Turbo M.2 port can be seen next to the chipset heatsink between PCI-Ex16 slots 2-3.
MSI have also added their Audio Boost technology to the X99S MPOWER, the Audio Boost features dual amps, Nippon Chemi-con caps, an amplified and filtered signal and gold plated connectors inside the ports on the rear IO.
Under the capacitors on the left is where users will locate the V-Check Points which is where overclockers will be able to connect their multi-meters and other tools to further monitor the hardware and what it is doing, a very crucial point in overclocking is being able to closely manage your voltages and this will help make sure that is done.
The chipset heatsink features the MSI logo and a tiny bit of yellow accenting helping pull the overclock theme together quite nicely.
Alongside the M.2 and SATA Express ports, MSI have included 8x SATA 3 6.0GBPs ports and just to the right of these is another USB3.0 header.
Running along the bottom of the board are the front panel audio connect0r, overclock buttons to make overclocking a bit, an OC switch a FASTB1 button which if pushed before you start or restart your computer it will boot it straight into BIOS for you, USB 2.0 header, SATA Express port, fan header and a BIOS select switch that will allow you to switch between 2 different BIOS settings with ease.
The rear IO on the MSI X99S MPOWER featured 10x USB ports, but it also features the following:
– 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo port
– 1 x Clear CMOS button
– 1 x Optical S/PDIF-out port
– 2 x USB 2.0 ports
– 8 x USB 3.0 ports
– 1 x RJ45 LAN jack
– 1 x 5 in 1 OFC audio jack
