MSI X99S XPower AC LGA 2011-v3 Motherboard Review @ [H]

MSI X99S XPower AC LGA 2011-v3 Motherboard Review - MSI’s X99S XPower AC has a bundle heavy enough to crush woodland creatures and about as many features as you could possibly want and then some. MSI’s XPower series represents the pinnacle of what MSI offers and as a result we have high expectations for the X99S XPower AC.

What an attractive looking M/B. Too I already sold my 2011 CPU and upgraded to 4790K with Asus HERO VI.

But my future M/B shall be an XPOWER from MSI when broadwell is here..

Thanks for the review.

It is for the most part a solid board. The second NIC has issues (could perhaps be fixed with a later driver?) and the IO shield issue being a minor flaw.

Is there any way to take off the aluminum IO sheld, mount the offset for the top left corner then put the aluminum IO shield back on? Or is that not possible? I guess that's a minor annoyance, but it might mitigate the problem. Only other solution I can think of is to take off the IO shield, drill a hole over the offset and then put it back, which is somewhat time consuming and a bit of an annoyance.

What I think is interesting about MSI's XPower boards right now is that they seem to be fairly consistent on the high end boards at passing your "torture test", something competing boards seem to struggle with. Even the very expensive competing boards often seem unable to pass sustained tests with no air blowing over them.

Right now it's looking like none of the motherboard vendors have full speed DDR4 support and BIOS revisions on all these boards is pretty early. I remember it took a while after DDR3 came out to exceed DDR2 speeds. For a while it was at similar or slower speeds with looser timings and a price premium to boot.

On Haswell-E, it's looking like the silicon lottery rather than the choice of motherboard is going to be the deciding factor. This board I think is a solid choice for that reason as it seems to be one of the most stable.

Kyle: Between this, the Rampage V, or any of the other top end X99 boards which would you pick for your personal build if price were not in any way a factor?

I'm also an owner of the msi x99s xpower ac and thought I'd share some of my experience getting it set up with a xp9413 m.2 ssd.

It's one of the few board that does ultra m.2, but with the latest stable bios it will not boot to the xp9413 ssd. Windows can see it, but not boot to it. Can't even see it in the bios.

Contact msi support or visit their user to user forum and ask for the beta bios. It helps a lot.

Teenyman45 said:

Kyle: Between this, the Rampage V, or any of the other top end X99 boards which would you pick for your personal build if price were not in any way a factor?

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If I was to put one in my box today from the 4 I have personally reviewed, it would be the MSI X99S XPower AC. As far as the NIC driver issue goes, that was fully remedied by getting the driver direct from Intel, so I do not think there is a hardware problem there.

And interestingly I was going to build an X99 box this last week but decided to stick with my Core i7-4770K. I did however move to all Corsair Force GS SSDs and GTX 980 SLI...and Windows 8.1 finally.

i have

I have been looking everywhere (manual, MSI website) and I can't find any mention of that PLX chip. Am I missing something here? Your review says that this motherboard comes with a PLX PEX8747 chip. The manual clearly states that some things like 4 way SLI are not supported on 28 lane CPUs, which would be one of the few reasons to have a PLX chip installed in the first place. Can you guys please shed some light on this? Thank you.

I think this motherboard is going in my new build.

It is an amazing board for sure. I just sent mine for a RMA because of bios #2 being DOA, no matter what I try.

It does do everything and more though, and looks great to boot.

wolfman3k5 said:

I have been looking everywhere (manual, MSI website) and I can't find any mention of that PLX chip. Am I missing something here? Your review says that this motherboard comes with a PLX PEX8747 chip. The manual clearly states that some things like 4 way SLI are not supported on 28 lane CPUs, which would be one of the few reasons to have a PLX chip installed in the first place. Can you guys please shed some light on this? Thank you.

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This is my error. There is no PLX chip on this motherboard. There are few X99 motherboards that would utilize a PLX chip as it is generally not necessary.

In case anyone is reading this for a review, they have fixed the memory issues with newer bios updates.

I have my memory running at XMP2 @3000 Mhz on it with a 5930 @ 4.2Ghz.

One thing to remember in order to go over 2666 you have to increase the bus speed from 100 Mhz to 125. This also limits how much I can OC the processor. It won't post past 4.2 but I haven't really played too much with the voltages. It's super stable and cool right now I don't want to mess with it. I could get it to 4.5 easy with a 100 Mhz bus.

When checking memory though use ADIA64, nothing else works:



Not sure what the issue was with the Cover for the I/O panel unless it was like mine where I didn't realize I needed to use the MB screws, I just had to remove the 2 screws and put it back in. I had zero issues with the NIC drivers.

Got the MSI X99S XPower AC in my box and everything went extremely well.

Likewise. Great board!!


(click to enlarge)

Intel i7-5960X CPU (Corsair H110 280mm Liquid CPU cooler), Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB 3000MHz DDR4, Tri-SLI EVGA GTX 980 SC 4GB, Creative Sound Blaster ZxR audio, Samsung 850 Pro SSDs (256GB; 1TB), and a 2TB Western Digital Green WD20EARX 5400RPM HDD on an MSI X99S XPOWER AC motherboard inside of a Cooler Master CM Storm Trooper full tower – powered by a Seasonic X Series X-1250 (1250W; fully modular).

More pics - http://1pcent.com/?p=611.

You got me beat on the GPU front.