MSI X99A Gaming Pro Carbon Motherboard Review

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Just drop them graphics cards in there for a weird sexy combo, the lowest it'll drop to is a x4 lane configuration, meaning you have excellent bus bandwidth for current generation graphics cards as you are still using Gen 3.0 PCI Express lanes.
 

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When powered up it lights up in a very subtle fashion. The motherboard makes use of the standard ATX form factor so it'll fit in any regular chassis.

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All the LED activated bits on the motherboard are color configurable as well as animated if you like. So you could emulate the LEDs breathing etc. 
 

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In-between and above the PCIe slots (close to the PCH) you'll see a cute small connector, this in fact is a M.2 PCIE SSD port. It has x4 PCI-Express lanes available meaning it can have a max bandwidth of 32 Gbps. Again something we'll test later on in the article. 

That's four PCI-Express Generation 3.0 x16 slots, which have metal shielding at the top side of them. This is done to make the slots more sturdy. Graphics cards get heavier each day with big coolers. 

  • 4x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots*
    • Support x16/ x0/ x0/ x0, x16/ x16/ x0/ x0, x16/ x16/ x0/ x8, x8/ x16/ x8/ x8 with the CPU that supports 40 PCIe lanes.
    • Support x16/ x0/ x0/ x0, x16/ x8/ x0/ x0, x8/ x8/ x8/ x0, x8/ x8/ x8/ x4 with the CPU that supports 28 PCIe lanes
  • 2 x PCIe 2.0 x1 slots

PCI_E6 slot shares the bandwidth with U.2 port and M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4. This new connector offers not 10 Gbps storage bandwidth but a whopping 32 Gbps thanks to a x4 PCI Express Gen 3.0 connection. 
 

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Small and subtle detail; you can find LEDs underneath most of the shielding and heatsinks on this motherboard. 
 

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Also the NIC is LED active, it looks quite different alright. Love it, like it, hate it, smite it :) Taste differ per person, I think all the LED stuff is looking cool and subtle enough. Especially since you can configure all colors (aside from the NICs LED colors). 

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