MSI X99A Gaming Pro Carbon Edition Review
Up Close
The X99A Gaming Pro Carbon Edition comes in a very nice box which makes us think of the Batman villain Two Face. On the front is a McLaren P1 rebadged with the MSI Dragon logo, all black and menacing. Flip the box around and it’s an explosion of colour, with the Mystic lighting taking the majority of the real estate, but all the main motherboard features highlighted too. Very nice.
As befits a top of the line motherboard the Carbon comes with a full set of accessories, including a good sized case badge for you to advertise your hardware choice to the world. The X99A Pro Gaming Carbon itself is extremely subtle when powered off. The lack of colours ensuring that whichever hue you choose it wont look like a dogs breakfast. The carbon inserts in particular look very classy.
The CPU area is clear of any clumps of capacitors, so those of you who prefer to use extreme cooling methods can apply your pot without too much hassle. For the rest of us it helps to save any potential conflicts when choosing your CPU cooling options. Whatever you pick will fit comfortably and you wont be fearful of damaging any power components if you’re a little clumsy with your installation. You also get a really nice look at the Carbon flashes on the various heatsinks.Â
Supporting up to triple GPUs with the metal reinforced PCI Express slots, and fantastic shielding over the audio components, the X99A Pro Gaming Carbon is as pleasing to the eye as it is robust. Speaking of the audio the MSI X99A has dual headphone amplifiers as well as a dedicated front headphone header. Fully EMI shielded and on an isolated PCB you can be sure that the rest of your hardware wont interfere with the excellent sound quality, and gold plated jacks help keep the signal as smooth as possible.
The bright red button is the latest variant of MSIs outstanding automatic overclocking technology. In a nod to Spinal Tap the dial goes all the way up to eleven, giving you an overclocking boost up to a potential 5GHz clock speed. You need to have won the silicon lottery to hit those kind of speeds, but with 11 steps you can be certain of finding the sweet spot for your particular CPU.
