MSI X399 Gaming Pro Carbon AC Review

Peter Donnell / 7 years ago

A Closer Look

Now that it’s out of the box, the hype is real, as this is one crazy looking motherboard. Barely an inch is left anywhere, as it’s packing so much hardware! The black, gray and silver design looks great too, with a few carbon effect coatings thrown in for good measure.

You can hardly miss that giant socket, it takes up quite a large amount of the motherboard; don’t expect mini-ITX variants anytime soon! Surrounding it, you’ll find 8 X DIMM slots, all equipped with armor. To the bottom left, a 6-pin GPU connection, allowing you to boost the PCIe power delivery for more stable voltages, which is great for extreme systems.

VRM Cooling

The VRM heat sink is huge, towering above the motherboard with its very heavy-duty and industrial aesthetic. It’s a big chunk of metal and should do a great job of shifting heat.

The heat sink is huge but comes firmly screwed to a backplate behind the board. There’s a small cutaway too, allowing you to screw the motherboard to your chassis for added stability.

Dual Power Connectors

Not one, but two 8-pin power connectors are needed for the CPU. This CPU is not mucking about, lots of cores are going to need lots of power.

There’s a nice shroud over the rear I/O, however, on a big motherboard like this, a more enclosed design would have looked better, although it’s unlikely you’ll notice once you have it installed. The exposed wiring looks a bit rushed too, simple things that could have been tidied up.

Tucked on the left side, you’ll find the 24-pin PSU connector and a pair of SATA connectors and two fan headers along side it.

Robust Connectivity

Moving down the right side, another half-dozen SATA headers, giving us eight in total. There are also two USB 3.0 headers, giving you even more connectivity.

The bottom row is packed too, with an auto overclocking dial, power controls and a BIOS Debug LED giving you great control over the board. Next, you’ll find a USB 3.1 header, and a load of other headers included extra fan headers.

Moving over, more fan headers, HD audio headers, and some RGB headers. Overall, if you’ve got something to plug into a motherboard, you’ll find loads of space here to hook up anything you need..

M.2 x 3!

Storage gets a huge boost with three M.2 slots, all with Armor covers to keep things looking neat and tidy, as well as providing extra cooling. Armoured PCIe lanes will help support your huge and heavy expansion cards. Finally, Audio Boost IV hardware on the left side, with gold capacitors and a high-end DAC to keep your surround sound or headsets pumping.

The rear I/O panel keeps with the extreme connectivity theme too. There’s a PS2 connection, 12 USB ports, including a Type-C connector. Of course, there’s Gigabit LAN, HD audio, and even BIOS/CMOS reset controls on there too, giving you the complete package.