MSI X99S Xpower AC – Taking Haswell E performance to the next level!

Introduction – MSI X99S XPOWER AC

MSI has made motherboards and Graphics offerings for some time now and has recently extended its reach into the Notebook and all kinds of other accessory devices. Today we get the awesome opportunity to follow up the powerful and feature packed X99S Gaming 9 with the X99S XPOWER board which is on the other end of the extreme spectrum built for overclockers while the Gaming 9 was more targeted directly at the extreme side of the gaming market.

MSI has made a pretty strong showing in the extreme overclocking and performance segment with its XPOWER series of boards and coinciding lightning and other model cards.

 

The board comes in at a street price of $398.99 directly from Newegg at the time of this writing, this places the X99S XPOWER in a decent place as it is almost 100 dollars cheaper than the top end OC board from ASUS and a bit above the OC board from Gigabyte. Now lets see what features this board offers and what it can do to make it worthy of your test bench.

Features & Specifications

Military Class Components

When MSI puts military class components to the fire they are not joking as they come to the table claiming to have passed multiple tests following Mil spec (MIL-STD-810G) Tests including:

• Temperature Shock testing: Sudden thermal changes which can normally wreak havoc on electrical components are fully tested on these components to ensure they can last through some of the worst conditions like what the extreme enthusiasts community may employ them for.
• Humidity Testing: Testing of components in different humidity conditions can make a big difference as to the capabilities of the cards as different areas can have much different environments and not every deployment will be like a sterile lab and knowing they can take that kind of abuse once again is a major plus.
• Vibration tests: This one is a little nuts but being in California we suppose in an earthquake, MSI can ensure the shaking won’t affect the components.
• Low Pressure Testing: This once again is a little extreme as deployment for different elevations especially extreme enough to require low pressure testing will be extremely rare if ever but it will handle it.
• High Temperature Testing: This one should be a standard for every component in a high end PC as thermals are the enemy of every enthusiasts rig so I like to see such attention paid here.
• Low Temperature Testing: Once again this is something more targeted at the Lightning model, but the fact that they test these cards to withstand LN2 benchmarking temperatures tells us that under standard gaming stresses this card is gonna run and keep on running.
• Shock Testing: This is once again more extreme as these are similar to drop or rough impact testing which, even if the board survives we’re sure other components may not fare so well in this kind of scenario.

Basically this means that this board/components should last the test of time and offer excellent performance pretty much through anything it would ever experience in an extreme gaming PC.

 

Guard Pro

 

MSI employs a feature on the newer motherboard models labeled Guard Pro which is all of the protections built into the board to protect it from fault or damage. EMI, ESD, Thermal and even humidity protection are all in place to ensure that your MSI motherboard can stand up to the worst conditions and keep on ticking.

OC Essentials

This is what we were talking about as MSI has been building Mpower and Xpower boards for some time so adopting many of these features onto the board came naturally and easily.

• Slow mode switch: this allows downclocking of the CPU in order to pass boot issues or has even been used for quick flip for validation purposes although I believe a valid should be stable enough to at least be at desktop without loading.
• OC Genie Switch: The OC Genie switch takes the normal OC Genie and gives it another step or gear to push even higher clocks than standard OC Genie settings.
• Direct OC Switch: this switch is the toggle which allows changing between .1MHz to 1MHz adjustments via the BCLK adjust buttons which will allow a more finite scale for when pushing the very edge of overclocking.

OC Buttons

OC Genie has been around for a while and is basically a quick easy to set overclock that is a one touch solution. It’s an easy way for a gamer to get a free performance boost from their system.

The Xpower board offers a bit more than just the standard buttons with the full gamut of adjustability from +/- buttons for BCLK and CPU ratio adjustments along with the ability to even change the BCLK from 1MHz to 0.1MHz scaling for even more granularity when pushing for the very last little bit from the platform.

The Discharge button is a pretty awesome feature. It’s like the ultimate BIOS clear, as it clears not just the BIOS settings but even the training and everything from the memory of the board to an even deeper level. Those who bench will know that when a board starts going wonky sometimes you have to remove battery for a minute or two, which clears the board. This switch manages the same effect in just a few seconds so that is one really cool option as this board is mainly designed for those super-high end enthusiasts who will likely use this board at the edge of its stability.

 OC PCB

The OC PCB consists of 50% more PCB material which allows for more trace isolation for tighter component fitment while reducing the risk of interference from an adjacent component. Also having a thicker PCB allows for larger power and signaling traces which means cleaner operation and more power available for when you’re really pushing hardware.

Digital power design is the use of full digital designs for the VRM which means super precise voltage regulation along with better Vdroop control for extreme situations.

The thermal design for the Xpower was made for the enthusiasts as many will run liquid cooling which means very little airflow near the CPU socket area. Therefore MSI took the initiative to optimize the cooling design to allow thermal evacuation from the VRM area even with little to no airflow. For those really looking to push it there is also Water cooling fittings in place to allow liquid cooling of the VRM/Chipset area to keep things cool no matter the loading and airflow conditions.

The Extreme OC socket design utilizes many surface mount and low profile components so that when insulating for sub ambient cooling it is easy and doesn’t require hand yoga to figure out how to insulate around tall barrel caps.

OC Engine

OC Engine is MSI’s name for the ability to set straps for CPU BCLK speeds in order to allow linked bus speeds without the crashing or instability that would happen previously when upping the BCLK traditionally.

Delid Die Guard

One very unique feature of the Xpower is the Die Guard which allows de-lidding of the CPU for Direct Die cooling and it includes a bracket to allow mounting of the CPU with pressure to ensure good pin contact while ensuring that you do not damage the CPU in the process.

It is worth noting and I feel an obligation to notate the fact that de-lidding the CPU definitely voids any and all warranties for your chip so this is for the die-hard no warranties concerned extreme overclockers.

DDR4

MSI knows that when a XPOWER board is released that users get them to push to the very edge of every component and memory has become the target of extreme clocks and binning recently so having support for not only extreme clocks but super high density which with 3D stacking of DDR4 you can now enjoy 128GB of RAM in your machine possibly more in the future but even know getting 16GB DIMMS are likely gonna be a tough one to come by.

V-Checkpoints

MSI’s V-check point feature has always been very popular as it allows direct access to voltage readings directly from the board via a DMM, and the connector leads have a small bump in the connection which means your DMM leads snap in snug so you don’t have to hold them in place so you can bench while keeping real-time monitoring data active during a session.

OC Fan Stand

MSI has introduced a newer feature for the Xpower and an interesting one to say the least. For those users looking to bench this board hard there are bound to be the need for mounting fans in various places and many times this results in hanging fans from a threaded rod for the LN2 pot like I have been known to do on many occasions.
The new OC Fan Stand actually makes a hard mount from the board mounting points to which a fan can be added as you can see in the pic a Sharkoon fan bearing MSI color scheme is shown. but any fan can be mounted here to allow airflow which can avoid settling of moisture and even frost over critical areas.

SATA Express / M.2

MSI Decided much like we saw on the Gaming 9 board to employ the M.2 slot and also offer a SATA Express port should you decide to go that route. While presently SATA Express drives are almost non existent we still know they will eventually arrive and with the normal refresh cycle of the HEDT it is likely to see a variety of SATA Express storage solutions before the next cycle.

OC Backplate

MSI knowing that the XPOWER will likely come under extreme cooling use by many users employs a OC Backplate option which replaces the standard larger backplate with a smaller one with no threaded mounting holes so that the threaded rods for a cooling container mounting can bee passed through without issue.

OC Software

MSI really put some time into selecting software and optimizing it for optimum overclocking performance.

MSI Command Center – The Command Center software from MSI is the full featured GUI based overclocking and monitoring tool designed to allow full control and flexibility of your experience with the board but obviously when edge overclocking most are gonna opt for the Command Center Lite version due to its low resource loading.

MSI Command Center Lite – MSI has its always popular command center but with the command center lite you get a tool that is very low resource usage and fast loading to allow adjustments from within the OS without the resource usage or even installation you normally have with the normal control utilities. This is excellently useful for those who are benching at the edge of stability and need to make a quick adjustment without crashing.

MSI RAMDisk – MSI integrated a RAMDisk software within its software suite which allows for using excess RAM as a super high-speed storage volume. This is great in itself as some RAMDisk software can cost upwards of $30+ and may not have the same feature set. One thing we do like is that there are specific check boxes for enabling the RAMDisk to handle the Pagefile or browser cache files which means everything will actually load a lot more quickly. Also there is no size limit on this software so if you have a 32GB kit of memory in your system you can easily use a large chunk of that to make a storage system which can transfer at speeds up to 10GB/s. The RAMDisk will dump and image file to disk when shutting down and load it when starting up so you want to expect some delays during startup and shutdown to save or load the image especially if using a much larger RAMDisk.

 

Enthusiasts Optimized Slot Configuration

X99 with the top and midrange chip offers 40 PCIe Gen 3 lanes and that is a ton of available bandwidth so MSI optimized the slot layout on the XPOWER to capitalize on this for maximum graphics capability running up to 4 way SLI or CrossfireX for your next run at the benchmark record.

Another cool feature is the ceasefire switches which allow for disabling of a single or multiple PCIe slots which will make diagnosing tr testing single GPUs a quick affair vs physically pulling cards while the board frosts up.

Audio Boost

Even though this is an OC board MSI knows that just like previous versions many will use it for gaming builds so they employed some of their Audio boost magic with the ALC1150 at the helm which is the base starting point for many gaming boards we have seen recently. This is a strong start and with high-end audio caps and dual AMPs for both rear and front panel audio boosting you can expect a top quality experience no matter how you connect.

WiFi AC

 

With the X99S XPOWER you can expect high speeds no matter what you’re doing as the board also comes armed with 802.11 AC WiFi to ensure you have the best possible speeds for pretty much anything you do with this rig.

 

Protective IO Cover

MSI states that the black cover over the IO can help reduce EMI and I could see that as a shield could help but more than anything it makes a cool look for the board.

Direct USB

DirectUSB is a physical USB port right on the lower edge of the board. This is actually quite useful as access to the rear IO can be limited depending on board position on test bench. This allows for data saving, benchmark backups or even quick restores or installs of the OS from a USB flash drive.

 

Gaming Ports

We have seen this before from MSI with the “Gaming” ports which are special ports which are tuned for using high sensitivity or quick response mouse technologies as many mice now can adjust the polling rate but the effect could be lessened depending on your port configuration. With the MSI gaming ports they are tuned for this along with having higher gold content in the contacts for these ports which allows for more reliable and consistent signal transfer.

MSI Click 4 BIOS

MSI has revised their UEFI to add even more options along with increasing the smoothness of it as well for a better end-user experience. We have included a few screenshots of it especially the new features below in the BIOS section.

 

 

Here you can see the new BIOS looks very nice, and the yellow theme actually plays quite well. The settings are all easy to locate within main and sub menus. the Fan control allows for full fan ramping control based from temperature references or even manual fan controls. Also the board explorer feature is really nice as it allows you to see not just what is populated on the board but even device ID’s for what is installed as you see the DIMM information including exact model number here.

Even More Features

The MSI Gaming board is exploding with features such as.

•  CPU OCP:  MSI has enabled a Overcurrent Protection feature into the Xpower so that if it senses a short it will cut power and allow other devices to hopefully avoid damage and with all luck it will be isolated to the affected component only.

• OC Pen Drive:  This one is kind of odd to me but being a overclocker I always use pen drives for all bench screenshots so it kinda makes sense but MSI included a pen drive from Team group and you can load pretty much anything on it but I imagine it will get relegated to bench OS loads or even bench screenshots… maybe thats just how I would use it.

• Go2BIOS Button: This button is a direct link to entering BIOS which means you don’t have to spam Delete as this button will get you there with a single press.