MSI X299M Gaming Pro Carbon AC Motherboard Review

A Closer Look

I think this motherboard is pretty understated in terms of design, and I certainly like that. Everything is laid out neatly and not too cluttered, which should look great once installed on any system.  Understated or not, it’s still packing a lot of hardware too.

The main attraction is the CPU socket, which I’m sure you all know is freaking huge. It comes surrounded by four DIMM slots, with two on each side. Sure, X299 can handle up to 8 slots, but this is likely more than enough for most system builds, and perfectly fine for a Micro-ATX motherboard design.

Power Delivery

The power delivery hardware looks pretty robust, and it needs to be with the huge power draw of the high-end X299 processors.

The only thing that concerns me is the size of the heatsink. It’s pretty chunky, it’s robust, and it feels very well made, but there doesn’t appear to be a whole lot of it.

Tucked into the top right corner, you’ll find a few fan headers, as well as a very handy BIOS debug LED.

M.2 Storage

Tucked in alongside the DIMM slots, you’ll also find one of the M.2 drive mounts; making good use of the space available on this more compact motherboard design.

Connectivity is hardly lacking here. You’ll find 8 SATA ports, Front Panel Type-C, USB 3.0, USB 2.0, and more all accounted for here. Also, while not the fanciest of designs, there are two tiny buttons in the corner for power and reset.

The entire bottom row is packed with headers for fans, front panel cables, lighting headers, audio, and more. The small button near the middle is “DEMOLED1” which is neat. There’s also slider switch for changing the BIOS, always handy if things go wrong when overclocking or updating.

Armoured PCIe

There are three full-size PCIe lanes, and two of them are fitted with Armour. I know you can really only do two full-size graphics card, but I would have liked to see all three slots armoured to keep things matching, but it’s hardly a deal breaker. Those pushing harder overclocks on their PCIe devices can also use the 6-pin header on the left to help maintain more stable voltages here. Tucked into the middle, you’ll also find the second M.2 drive with an M.2 Shield to keep it cool and protected.

Powerful and Accurate Audio

This motherboard packs some decent audio hardware too. It uses the incredible ALC1220 chipset, as well as the Nahimic processing, as well as powerful amplification and dedicated gold-caps to drive it all.

All that audio is pumped through the five gold-plated jacks at the rear, or through TosLink Optical. The rest of the rear I/O is packed too, with dual LAN, eight USB ports including Type-C, built-in WiFi, and built-in CMOS controls.

Customisation

Remember I said about tweaking the design? Well, all of the shrouding on this motherboard is removable, which will keep the modders happy. However, if you want a quick changeup, the “Gaming Pro” carbon fibre effect panel pops off, and you can clip in the gold or silver one.