An AMD Threadripper X399 Motherboard Overview: A Quick Look at Seven Products
by Ian Cutress & Joe Shields on September 15, 2017 9:00 AM ESTThe MSI X399 SLI Plus
As with other X399 boards, the MSI X399 SLI Plus uses eight total memory slots, although these are not reinforced. This configuration allows for up to 128GB of RAM in a quad channel setup. MSI uses their DDR4 Boost technology on the SLI Plus and lists memory speed support up to DDR4-3600+.
Power delivery is handled by a fully digital 13 phase VRM which looks quite similar to the Gaming Pro Carbon AC. Per the Military Class VI specs, it uses Titanium chokes and 'dark' capacitors. We cannot confirm by the pictures, however, it is likely using the same DrMOS ICs found on the Pro Carbon. Power is fed to the VRMs by two 12V CPU leads (one is optional) located in the upper left-hand corner of the board. The SLI Plus has a full two character debug LED as well as a simplified four LED debug system with LED’s for Boot, VGA, DRAM, and CPU.
The SLI Plus has a total of six PCIe slots: two PCIe 2.0 x1 slots and four full-length PCIe 3.0 slots. The two main GPU slots, capable of running x16/x16 if they are the only ones populated, are reinforced with MSI’s Steel Armor to support heavy video cards and prevent potential damage to the slot. The motherboard supports 4-Way NVIDIA SLI and 4-Way AMD Crossfire technologies.
For storage, the SLI Plus has a total of eight SATA ports fed from the chipset, and has the same physical location and orientation of the Pro Carbon; six horizontal and two vertical. There are a total of three PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots which get their lanes from the CPU. Two of the M.2 slots support up to 80mm drives, while the middle slot can handle up to 110mm modules. Only the top M.2 slot has a heatsink for cooling down the installed M.2 module. U.2 support does not make it to the SLI Plus.
The audio side of the house is managed by a Realtek ACL1220 codec working in conjunction with MSI’s Audio Boost 4 suite. While the Nahimic software package normally found on the gaming products does not make its way here, the SLI Plus uses separate audio layers for left and right channels, de-pop protection, Chemi-Con audio capacitors, EMI shielding and board separation, and a dedicated headphone amplifier which auto-detects impedance (use up to 600Ω).
As far as the overall aesthetic, MSI uses a black PCB and color scheme and lets the integrated RGB LEDs fit whatever theme a builder has in mind. LEDs make it on the back panel IO shroud, chipset heatsink, and a strip found on the back of the board under the SATA ports. Additional RGB LED strips can be added via the two onboard RGB headers. One is for a rainbow strip, while the other for general RGB; both are controlled by MSI’s Mystic Light software.
Pricing was not listed, but we do expect the SLI Plus to come in under the Gaming Pro Carbon. We should see these available for purchase soon.
| MSI X399 SLI PLUS | |
| Warranty Period | 3 Years |
| Product Page | Link |
| Price | N/A |
| Size | ATX |
| CPU Interface | TR4 |
| Chipset | AMD X399 |
| Memory Slots (DDR4) | Eight DDR4 Supporting 128GB Quad Channel Up to 3600 MHz (OC) Supports ECC UDIMM (in non-ECC mode) |
| Network Connectivity | 1 x Intel Gigabit LAN controller |
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC1220 |
| PCIe Slots for Graphics (from CPU) | 4 x PCIe 3.0 x16 |
| PCIe Slots for Other (from Chipset) | 2 x PCIe 2.0 x1 |
| Onboard SATA | 8 x Supporting RAID 0/1/10 |
| Onboard SATA Express | None |
| Onboard M.2 | 3 x PCIe 3.0 x4 - NVMe or SATA |
| Onboard U.2 | None |
| USB 3.1 | 1 x Type-C (ASMedia) 1 x Type-A (ASMedia) 1 x Internal Header |
| USB 3.0 | 4 x USB 3.0 |
| USB 2.0 | 2 x Back Panel 2 x Headers |
| Power Connectors | 1 x 24-pin ATX 2 x 8-pin CPU |
| Fan Headers | 1 x CPU (4-pin) 1 x Water Pump (4-pin) 4 x System Fan (4-pin) |
| IO Panel | 1 x Clear CMOS button 1 x BIOS FLASHBACK+ button 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo port 2 x USB 2.0 Type-A ports 8 x USB 3.0 Type-A ports 1 x LAN (RJ-45) 1 x USB 3.1 Type-A port 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C port 5 x Audio Jacks 1 x Optical S/PDIF OUT connector |
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Holliday75 - Friday, September 15, 2017 - link
Where is this magical land?ddriver - Friday, September 15, 2017 - link
Actually, many people in the developed world call a technician for even trivial things like changing a fuse. Building a computer, as simple as it is, is out of this world achievement in their eyes.mapesdhs - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
Weird, normally such a person wouldn't even ask a relevant question. My gf doesn't care what my HTPC has inside, as long as it runs YT and plays DVDs, etc. ok, and she can use the wifi link to find stuff for her Kindle.mapesdhs - Tuesday, September 19, 2017 - link
NB: I was replying to ddriver saying, "So a dumb wife having to approve your purchases is a realistic scenario? :D".Vatharian - Friday, September 15, 2017 - link
No anything that has more than 2 HDDs is a server. I also have gaming PC that has 10 HDDs. They are low capacity, and connected to low-end HBA, but this way I won't ever lose any data. And I just can't think of a reason to pay well over $1000 for 10 disk-capable NAS.ddriver - Friday, September 15, 2017 - link
You really must love noise then, and waste power. Besides, the more drives, the more drives, the higher the odds some of them die. You can get a couple of large HGST drives, huge capacity, excellent reliability. The odds of both drives failing is minuscule, and would require the entire system burning up, which would be just as devastating regardless of many drives you have. You don't require 10 drives for the sake of the number. 10 TB HGST HE10 are like 350$.Besides, TR doesn't fall neither in the "budget", nor in the "gaming" category. That's a workstation CPU, and it actually does pretty bad in gaming, considering its price. Paying that much money for a product you are not gonna use for the job it is best at and complaining the mobo doesn't fit your senseless and wrong usage scenario - that's kinda dumb.
It is a new high end product, you are gonna put new high end components in it, not 10 poor old tiny HDDs.
Guwapo77 - Saturday, September 16, 2017 - link
It's not bad at gaming, however, it is not wise to use this solely for gaming. A workstation that you can use to handling your day to day workload that just happens to be fairly decent for gaming when you have time.Anyone building a gaming rig that chooses to buy a TR fails at life.
cyberguyz - Thursday, December 28, 2017 - link
It has 2x M.2 slots not 3x. You need an add-in card to get the 3rd with this onefazalmajid - Sunday, September 17, 2017 - link
Annoying, but a LSI add-in HBA will generally outperform integrated SATA by a wide margin.karatekid430 - Thursday, October 26, 2017 - link
Ask the manufacturers to make M.2 PCIe cards with a SATA controller and a heap of SATA ports on board. I want them to provide these, and exclude SATA from motherboards, to save space and reduce complexity and cost. That way, the motherboards are cleaner for people who only require NVMe, and allow for people who need SATA to sacrifice M.2 slots for SATA.