MSI X399 Pro Gaming Carbon AC Review

MSI X399 Pro Gaming Carbon AC Review

Introduction

No sooner have we all just taken a breath after the release of the Ryzen 7 series of CPUs and the accompanying X370 chipset than the Threadripper CPUs appeared. If you’ve been following along this influx of AMD products then you’ll know that the Ryzen Threadripper has more cores and threads available than will be required by all but the most power hungry users. The combination of decent clock speed and umpteen cores means that it is an absolute calculative beast.

With a new CPU usually we get a new chipset and whilst the X370 is fresh off the assembly line the Threadripper has different requirements and thus we have the X399 chipset to sit alongside it and supply it with all the high bandwidth technologies it could need.

We first saw the X399 in the guise of the ASUS Zenith Extreme and now MSI are here with their range-topping X399 Pro Gaming Carbon AC. Taking all the loveliness that we saw on the X299 Pro Gaming Carbon and applying it to the X399 chipset should lead to a great product, so let’s find out how it fares.

Technical Specifications

As you would expect from such a modern product the Pro Gaming Carbon ticks all the boxes. We have Quad channel DDR4 support up to 3600 MHz and 128GB ensuring that even the most demanding user wont find themselves leaning on the pagefile. Additionally there are four PCI Express slots for multi-GPU goodness and the Carbon supports both SLI and CrossfireX. Storage needs are met with three M.2 drive sockets, 8 SATA 6Gb/s ports and to keep all your peripherals happy there are fifteen (15!) USB 3.1 ports of both Type C and Type A styles. Let’s take a closer look.

MSI X399 Pro Gaming Carbon AC Review Â