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 Conclusion
There are two types of overclocking enthusiasts. The bigger camp contains those that overclock for better daily performance, but the more interesting side attempts to push hardware to the limit for records. Ultimately what ends up happening is that a motherboard manufacturer has to cater for both, and the casual overclocking crowd brings in the money while the extreme users supply the glory.
Unfortunately this dichotomy raises a few questions. In 2015, most motherboards overclock the same on the CPU side for 24/7, perhaps all within 5% or 200 MHz at the absolute most, and the major factor here is more the luck or nature of the CPU itself. That means a cheap overclocking motherboard can actually be a good thing. The flip side of this is that extreme overclockers need an element of over engineering to deal with -150ºC temperatures with liquid nitrogen, which pushes up the cost. For the 24/7 overclockers, these high end boards might offer a lot of superfluous features in terms of engineering, and the recommendation for these users is not positive when the product is over $400 for X99.
With that being said, a well-positioned high-end motherboard can drive sales lower down the stack. We have seen motherboards like the Rampage X79 Extreme drive high-end sales, or the Z87X-OC aggressively attack the mid-range overclockers and be very successful. While the X99S MPower in this review performed well, it doesn't have the wow factor that the true hall-of-fame boards have had.
On the hardware side, the MSI X99S MPower promotes its overclocking credentials through the two-stage OC Genie button, onboard OC buttons as well as an easier to use overclocking BIOS compared to previous generations. Other hardware over the default configuration include Audio Boost (an upgraded Realtek ALC1150 audio solution with an EMI shield, PCB separation and additional filter caps), a SATA Express port, an M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 port, support for multiple graphics cards and the yellow/black livery and styling. MSI likes its bundles, so there is a stick-on chassis shield included along with a door hanger and cable stickers. The usual array of SLI bridges are also part of the package, although one too few for 3-way SLI requiring users to go and get another.
Nothing untoward occurs in our benchmark numbers, although for a non-multicore turbo base BIOS it does come across as an aggressive implementation. The DPC Latency comes in at under 100 microseconds, and the audio solution comes on the top half of the comparison points, but the idle power numbers join the MSI X99 SLI PLUS at the bottom of the leaderboard. The BIOS still has some nice fan control interaction, as well as a rearranged overclocking section to make things easier compared to previous MSI chipsets, and the software still has one of the best auto-update tools available. It is a shame that the control software makes it too easy to push up the voltage to ridiculous levels.
Competition for the MSI X99S MPower comes from many different angles, such as the X99-SOC Champion, the X99 OC Formula and some of the more general gaming models. $300 is a big battle ground for X99, switching over from the cheaper end to the more mid-range, and the MSI X99S MPower has a number of positive points to make it worth considering. There is not one killer feature like some of the other models, but MSI has historically played it safe on that front, preferring to spend extra on the style and experience instead.
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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.