MSI X99S MPower Review: Sting Like a Bee
by Ian Cutress on February 17, 2015 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- MSI
- Overclocking
- X99
MSI X99S MPower In The Box
We mention in every motherboard review that the box content matters. In some cases, depending on the extras, it can approach 5-10% of the overall system cost. In an industry where every part of a cent is examined in close scrutiny, shaving $0.02 by taking out a couple of SATA cables is done on a regular basis. With the high end market there is more leniency to include these extras, especially when it comes to a themed range such as gaming or overclocking. The point here is that the motherboard manufacturer wants to envelop the user into their ecosystem and their products, and the box contents are one angle of attack. MSI’s box contents are as follows
OC Themed Rear Shield
OC Themed Chassis Badge
User Guide
Overclocking Guide
Software Guide
OC Door Hanger
MSI Poster
Quick Start Guide
Cable Stickers
Easy Connectors for Front Panel
Driver Disk
Six SATA Cables
Two Flexi-SLI Bridges
There is a good amount going on here, especially with a bundled overclocking guide. The door hanger and poster is a bit much for anyone over 25, which is doubled by the fact that this platform is geared for those with a bit more spare cash which tends to be the generation over 25. The chassis badge is reasonably decent, and six SATA cables for 10 ports is par for the course. What MSI has failed to realize is the SLI situation – for three-way GPU setups, two SLI cables is not enough. When trying to implement three-way SLI with flexi-cables, such as with GTX 770 Lightnings that stick out in the way of rigid connectors, you need three cables in what feels like a very odd configuration:
The SLI paths go from card 1 to card 2, card 2 to card 3 and card 1 to card 3. Any other combination refuses to enable SLI mode in the drivers we use, but it means that three cables are required. So MSI’s product team that figured out the included bundles are either too familiar to Crossfire and assume it is the same, or just missed the ball.
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our test bed:
Thank you to OCZ for providing us with PSUs and SSDs.
Thank you to G.Skill for providing us with memory.
Thank you to Corsair for providing us with an AX1200i PSU.
Thank you to MSI for providing us with the NVIDIA GTX 770 Lightning GPUs.
Thank you to Rosewill for providing us with PSUs and RK-9100 keyboards.
Thank you to ASRock for providing us with some IO testing kit.
Thank you to Cooler Master for providing us with Nepton 140XL CLCs.
Test Setup
| Test Setup | |
| Processor | Intel Core i7-5960X ES 8 Cores, 16 Threads, 3.0 GHz (3.5 GHz Turbo) |
| Motherboards | MSI X99S MPower |
| Cooling | Cooler Master Nepton 140XL |
| Power Supply | OCZ 1250W Gold ZX Series Corsair AX1200i Platinum PSU |
| Memory | Corsair DDR4-2133 C15 4x8 GB 1.2V G.Skill Ripjaws 4 DDR4-2133 C15 4x8 GB 1.2V |
| Memory Settings | JEDEC @ 2133 |
| Video Cards | MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB (1150/1202 Boost) |
| Video Drivers | NVIDIA Drivers 332.21 |
| Hard Drive | OCZ Vertex 3 256GB |
| Optical Drive | LG GH22NS50 |
| Case | Open Test Bed |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit SP1 |
| USB 2/3 Testing | OCZ Vertex 3 240GB with SATA->USB Adaptor |
MSI X99S MPower Overclocking
Experience with MSI X99S MPower
MSI has several things right with the way they do things. The look of the motherboards is often a plus point, as well as the positive branding. Software such as Live Update is a plus to the business as well. The overclocking side of things, while they have improved with the realignment of the BIOS options for X99, still needs a fair bit of work. For the automatic overclock options, we only get a choice of OC Genie in one of two very similar modes. There is no option to test for peak overclocks, or a variety of overclocks to choose from. These two modes are all there is to work with, which for someone who wants to overclock but doesn’t have the confidence is not the best way to do things. I have spoken to MSI on this issue, in order to expand their look-up-tables for overclocking options, and I hope it changes in the future.
For manual overclocking, the software has one big issue relating to the voltage on offer. Command Center offers a dial up to 2.1 volts for the CPU, which is partially insane as even extreme overclockers do not need that much. A better way would be to offer 1.4 volts in software and have an advanced mode that extends that range. Manual overclocking from the BIOS was straight forward enough now that MSI has adjusted the order of the OC options, however there are a number of options that make no sense even with the help guide attached, such as the vDroop control. MSI needs to hire someone who can convert the overtly engineer-only technical jargon to something more understandable and more relatable to the end user.
From our overclocking performance, we saw nothing out of the ordinary here on our mediocre CPU. The first OC Genie mode caused an OCCT error due to the voltage being too low.
Methodology
Our standard overclocking methodology is as follows. We select the automatic overclock options and test for stability with PovRay and OCCT to simulate high-end workloads. These stability tests aim to catch any immediate causes for memory or CPU errors.
For manual overclocks, based on the information gathered from previous testing, starts off at a nominal voltage and CPU multiplier, and the multiplier is increased until the stability tests are failed. The CPU voltage is increased gradually until the stability tests are passed, and the process repeated until the motherboard reduces the multiplier automatically (due to safety protocol) or the CPU temperature reaches a stupidly high level (100ºC+). Our test bed is not in a case, which should push overclocks higher with fresher (cooler) air.
Overclock Results
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Horza - Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - link
Thanks for the review but no info regarding the power delivery? It's the first thing I look into with an overclocking board. More for reliability than any extra clock speed. I'm aware phase count is not always a useful metric but it would be nice to include it.Anyway it's 12 phase a "ISL6388 6-phase PWM" with doublers. "Fairchild FDMF5823DC MOSEFTs" rated 55a. Twelve Solid Ferrite Chokes (SFC). Memory is "Two Powervation PV3203 controllers"
tabascosauz - Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - link
Every manufacturer appears to be cheapening their boards that carry over from Z87 to Z97, but on X99, this is quite disappointing to hear. IR3550s are expensive, but an analog PWM on an overclocking board? This is a surprising choice, especially in the light of Asus' and GB's X99 boards. The X99 Deluxe pairs the nice "Blackwing" chokes with IR3550Ms, although it costs way more. Even the UD7, a non-OC geared board, comes in at just $20 more with the usual GB fare: all new IR, from the IR3580 PWM to the IR3556s.The ISL6388 is disappointing. This doesn't belong on MPower. So what if the FDMF5823 is one of Fairchild's DrMOS top-of-the-line products? The ISL6388 is on a completely different level. MSI has always flaunted their "Solid Ferrite Chokes" while hiding crappy MOSFETs/PWMs under heatsinks since Z77.
Antronman - Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - link
In the end, the serious OC purchase will always be ASUS' Rampage Extreme series. I don't understand why you'd cheapen your overclock with a board that has cut high-end features to lower the cost on the most expensive consumer platform.KennyDude27 - Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - link
Actually analog PWM or digital PWM doesn't mean one is better than the either. An analog pwm can be just as good if not better than a digital pwm and these days digital and analog is so obscure.If you mean digital control loop vs analog loop its hard to tell which is totally better. As long as the control loop is making the right decisions in the right amount of time it doesn't matter if its digital or analog. Phase shedding or increasing can be done in analog or digital as long as its done. Digital control loops do offer non linear control so you can do things such as have smaller caps but analog interfaced with digital can do the same and at much less power usage. The one issue with digital control is the process time so your limited to how fast the clock can run. Thats why they use alot of phases, it makes it so that the slow digital loop can handle it by dividing the time by the number of phases so you might be using a board that has more phases not for you but to help the digital control loop out since digital loop requires processing time to do its computation and control. So as switching speeds increase digital control may have a harder time while analog pwm can go to 20mhz or more no problem.
In the end its whichever solution gives the best performance and features people are willing to pay for
DanNeely - Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - link
I'm mildly surprised that MSI decided that this board could make due with only 2 12V connectors. The Z97 MPower used 3: 8pin, 4 pin, and 6pin PCIe; but its CPUs are lower power and is maxes out at 3GPUs vs potentially 4 here (with water cooling and if you can remove the video out ports on one card).29a - Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - link
What does 3DMark2001 XP Turbo in the BIOS do?Horza - Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - link
Boosts 3DMark2001 scores I'd imagine. My Gigabyte board has a similar "Legacy Benchmark Enhancement" setting in the bios which apparently boosts 01 score and SuperPi.kmmatney - Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - link
I just don't get why anyone spends $250+ on a motherboard. I've always been able to overclock my cpus quite high (better than the average, let's say) using motherboards that are virtually free with a Microcenter CPU+MB bundle. The last few motherboards have been the MSI PC-Mate Z77, and I was able to overclock both a G3258 and a Devil's Canyon Core i5 to levels on par with the Anandtech review of those respective cpus. The cpu heatsink makes more of a difference than the motherboard. I haven't had any stability problems overclocking, going back over 10 years, with basic motherboards. Once you have a good overclock and stability, what more do you need?Zap - Wednesday, February 18, 2015 - link
You can't directly compare pricing of socket 2011 motherboards versus socket 1150 motherboards. They are entirely different beasts.As for the exact same platform, more money gives more features. Also, some people can afford to spend more, and enjoy owning a "premium" product.
Why does someone pay for an iPhone when they can use a "almost the same" $100 Android phone? Why does someone pay for a top end Mercedes when a loaded Camry for $30,000 has power and leather everything, plus electronic gadgets?
That said, I do agree with you to a point. Sometimes more cost means real benefits. However, sometimes that just means extra NICs and PCIe slots and fancy VRM heatsinks that you still won't use or benefit from.
nos024 - Wednesday, February 18, 2015 - link
Choosing a motherboard is important, not just for overclocking capabilities. Whether you'd want SLI, extra USBs and SATA connectors, NIC, Wifi etc, Also some would like PCI/PS2 ports to carry on perips they want to incorporate into their new build. I learned this from many builds I'd built for myself. Essentially you are stuck with the motherboard you go with. I don't totally disagree with your point, but I've learned that cheap motherboards are just that...cheap.The most I will spend on a motherboard is $200 and I am quite satisfied with my ASRock Z97 Extreme 6. It took me months of research to settle on this. I'd happily pay an extra $50-100 for something I want.