MSI MEG X399 Creation – The best motherboard ever!

Rating: 9.0.

MSI demonstrated perfect timing when they introduced the MEG X399 Creation at Computex. AMD announced the 32-core 2990WX Threadripper at the start of Computex then MSI followed up with this X399 motherboard that uses 16-phase VRMs that promise a new level of power delivery. AMD increased the TDP of the 24-core and 32-core Threadrippers from 180W to 250W however this figure might be slightly confusing as the new CPUs were guaranteed to draw far more power from the wall socket under heavy load and when overclocked.

In theory you could match the 2990WX with any X399 motherboard but in practice we knew it would require something special and MSI MEG X399 Creation looked VERY special. The headline feature is the 16-phase VRM for the CPU Vcore and it turns out each phase is rated at 70A which means this motherboard has a maximum theoretical capability of 1,120A. If you set the Vcore at 1.2V this gives a total power figure that is north of 1,300W, while a 1.3V setting would be a maximum of 1,456W. Of course these are figures for the VRMs loaded to 100 percent but no matter how you look at it, these are remarkable figures for a workstation or gaming motherboard.

MSI has piled in a bunch of other features including support for up to 128GB of DDR4 memory, 8x SATA3 connectors, 3x M.2 SSDs slots, dual Gigabit Ethernet and Intel 802.11ac 2c2 Wi-Fi. That is a huge amount of storage and connectivity and yet, as you will see in our video, MSI also includes an item called M.2 Xpander-Aero that looks like a graphics card but which actually houses up to four M.2 SSDs in a PCI Express RAID enclosure.

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Key features

• Supports 1st and 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen Threadripper Series Processors Support 8 DIMMs, Quad Channel DDR4 3600+ (OC)
• Maximum Power: 19 phases digital power with heat-pipe heatsink design
• Maximum Temperature Control: Full fan control with 10 PWM fan headers and 3 dedicated thermal sensors
• Maximum Storage: 7 x Turbo M.2 with M.2 Xpander-Aero and AMD StoreMI technology
• Maximum Data Transfer: Dual Gigabit LAN with Dual-band Wireless-AC and bandwidth management
• M.2 Shield Frozr: Strengthened built-in M.2 thermal solution. Keeps M.2 safer and faster
• Core Boost: With premium layout and full digital power design to support more cores and provide better performance
• Dual 8 Pin Power Supply: By providing dual 8 pin connectors to ensure adequate power supply to unleash ultimate multi-core CPU performance
• Mystic Light: 16.8 million colours/17 effects controlled in one click. Mystic Light Extension support both RGB and Rainbow LED strip
• Lightning Fast Transfer Experience: 3x Turbo M.2 with Shield Frozr, AMD Turbo USB 3.1
• Audio Boost 4 with Nahimic: Reward your ears with studio grade sound quality
• DDR4 Boost with Steel Armour: Fully isolated, shielded and optimized DDR4 PCB design to give your DDR4 memory a performance boost
• Multi-GPU: With Steel Armour PCI-E slots. Supports 3-Way Nvidia SLI and 3-Way AMD Crossfire

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