MSI X99S Gaming 9 AC Motherboard Review - Product Showcase

Here you can see the five PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots. 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.

Here we can get a better look at the heatsinks the board uses. Very subtle, very nice and working really good. When powered up it lights up in a very subtle fashion. The Gaming 9 makes use of a EATX form factor. So it is a hint larger then your regular ATX motherboard form factor.

In-between and above the PCIe slots (close to the PCH) you'll see this cute small connector, this in fact is a M.2 PCIE SSD port. Mind you that if you use it you will lose the SATA5/6 ports. This new connector offers not 10 Gbps storage bandwidth but a whopping 32 Gbps thanks to a x4 PCI Express Gen 3.0 connection. We'll have a look at performance in this review as well.

Small and subtle detail; you can find LEDs underneath the motherboard. So once you have it installed in your PC the following happens.

Let me dim the room a little, BAM .. there's this HALO of light emanating from the motherboard. Very cool.