MSI X299 XPOWER Gaming AC Preview

Up Close cont

It isn’t only the amount of M.2 sockets that impress. Count the headers at the bottom edge of the XPOWER. 5 fan headers, four USB connections, RGB LED Strip header and a power input. The other edges of the X299 are similarly strewn with headers and connection points, as well as a full suite of on-board buttons for fine tuning your overclock.

  
  

MOSFET temperatures are the, if you’ll pardon the expression, hot topic at the moment. You can see how much work MSI has put in to ensuring that even the hardcore overclockers wont have issues with their thermal limits. The heatsinks beautifully cover the chokes, and they are tied together with a heatpipe so that the main power phases can take advantage of the larger surface area of the heatsink around the IO portion.

  
  

Storage and USB options are plentiful as you would expect on such a high end motherboard. It is unlikely you’ll fill up all of them, and even if you do the number of internal headers should make certain that you can employ all the peripherals you like.

Before we wrap up, let’s light this baby up.