MSI Announces the MEG X399 Creation Motherboard

[btarunr]

MSI today announced the MEG X399 Creation, its flagship socket TR4 motherboard, with out of the box support for 2nd generation AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2000 processors. The company showed off this board at the 2018 Computex, held this June. Although built in the ATX form-factor, this board is recommended only for EATX-capable cases. The highlight of this board is its gargantuan 19-phase CPU VRM that's optimized for overclocking event the 32-core Threadripper 2990WX. The board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, two 8-pin EPS, and an optional 4-pin Molex. Heat drawn from the CPU VRM MOSFETS is dissipated not just by a large heatsink that spans almost the entire width of the board, but also a secondary heatsink cooling the SoC phases, via a heat-pipe. The huge chipset heatsink cools not just the X399 chipset, but also three M.2-NVMe slots (two M.2-22110 and one M.2-2280). You get 4 more M.2-2280 slots over the new M.2-Xpander Aero, which is a PCI-Express 3.0 x16 riser card that converts the slot to four M.2-2280 slots with x4 wiring, ventilating them with a 100 mm fan. It ends up looking like a graphics card in doing so.

Expansion includes eight DDR4 DIMM slots supporting up to 2048 GB of DDR4 ECC memory; four PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (full-time x16/x8/x16/x4), and an x1. Storage connectivity includes 7 M.2-NVMe slots (3 onboard, 4 via the included M.2-Xpander Aero accessory); and eight SATA 6 Gbps ports. Connectivity includes MSI's highest-grade onboard audio solution combining an ALC1220 with a headphones amplifier, and audio-grade capacitors; and two 1 GbE interfaces driven by Intel i219-V controllers (10 GbE is a notable absentee); and 802.11ac + BT 5.0 WLAN. You get 10 USB 3.1 ports on the rear panel (including a type-C port), and four USB 3.1 ports via front-panel headers). RGB LED diffusers dot the rear I/O shroud, the chipset heatsink, and the reverse side of the PCB. The board is expected to be priced around $500.



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[kastriot]

Nice looking mobo.

 

[Caring1]

First thing I would do is remove those useless and ugly heatsinks, then stick some real ones on.
We all know creation isn't perfect, or evolution would never happen.

 

[bonehead123]

yet ANOTHER barfed-up transformers abortion gone bad.....but at least it has some decent specs & feature set. Well for $500, it damned well should

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

the number of slots are abundant for this motherboard. $500 may seemed high for some, but this is HEDT stuff right here, so it's somewhat decent. Lack of native 10GbE port is a little disappointment but there's always them PCIe driven 10GbE NIC cards to solve that issue.

 

[randomUser]

the number of slots are abundant for this motherboard. $500 may seemed high for some, but this is HEDT stuff right here, so it's somewhat decent. Lack of native 10GbE port is a little disappointment but there's always them PCIe driven 10GbE NIC cards to solve that issue.

The 10Gb NIC cards are usually much pricier than having it already in the motherboard with the high price.

AsRock z370 Taichi costs 220 Eur, ant z370 professional gaming i7 is about 257 Eur.
These boards are pretty much the same, except that i7 has a 10GbE and few other non important things.
You see the difference? 37 Eur.
Now i found a cheapest PCI-e 10GbE NIC card is Edimax single port card (EN-9320TX-E ) which costs 97 Eur.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Thats one sexy board, the paint job can go tho. The 19-phase VRM is sorely needed to OC the 2990/X, should also make the 1950/X able to boost clocks even higher and more stable. Storage is just amazing I cant imagine having 7 NVME drives let alone 8 SSDs attached. Might as well buy a full server rack with this board.

 

[bonehead123]

7x m.2 did grab my attention too, as long they all will run at 4x speeeeds....which I think they will with the included riser card..... So it seems that does account for ~$100 of the $500 price point...

However the lack of 10gE is a big poo poo at this price point IMHO

 

[Athlonite]

Thats one sexy board, the paint job can go tho. The 19-phase VRM is sorely needed to OC the 2990/X, should also make the 1950/X able to boost clocks even higher and more stable. Storage is just amazing I cant imagine having 7 NVME drives let alone 8 SSDs attached. Might as well buy a full server rack with this board.

That's if it really is 19 actual phase's

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

That's if it really is 19 actual phase's

thats my thought, i'm kinda expecting 16+3 or 15+4 config.

 

[Sandbo]

The article said 2048 GB RAM support, does it support registered ECC?

PS: reading from MSI website they mentioned 128GB in the spec.

 

[erixx]

copy&paste of GigaB's Designare idea...

 

[Athlonite]

thats my thought, i'm kinda expecting 16+3 or 15+4 config.

it's probably less with some of their fantastic phase fakery going on

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

The article said 2048 GB RAM support, does it support registered ECC?

PS: reading from MSI website they mentioned 128GB in the spec.

MSI sight specifications means128GB per slot. The article, more or less a press release, says its supports ECC. The 2048 capacity probably refers to future-proofing, some speculating here my guess is that we will see 256gb memory sticks for DDR4 eventually.

copy&paste of GigaB's Designare idea...

source? aka proof?

 

[micropage7]

First thing I would do is remove those useless and ugly heatsinks, then stick some real ones on.
We all know creation isn't perfect, or evolution would never happen.

yeah, sticker

first i expect it is from the angle of heatsink but too bad just stickers

 

[Sandbo]

MSI sight specifications means128GB per slot. The article, more or less a press release, says its supports ECC. The 2048 capacity probably refers to future-proofing, some speculating here my guess is that we will see 256gb memory sticks for DDR4 eventually.


source? aka proof?

I don't think so, they probably mean a maximum of 128 GB just like any other X399 boards, in particular they said
8 x DDR4 memory slots, support up to 128GB
which will make sense with 16*8 configuration.

 

[Caring1]

thats my thought, i'm kinda expecting 16+3 or 15+4 config.

Probably 8 phases doubled + memory chokes

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Probably 8 phases doubled + memory chokes

Have you examined the pics closely, sure looks like more than 8.

 

[Caring1]

Have you examined the pics closely, sure looks like more than 8.

That's because it is common to double the phases.
Or according to speculation from AnandTech: "19 power phases, arranged as 16 for the processor. This is likely a four-phase implementation with two doublers".
And PCPer's take on it: "and is topped by a ludicrous 16+3 power phase (doubled eight for vCore, the remaining phases for vSoC)"

 

[Dr_b_]

Specs on website say "Max 128GB" RAM, where did the 2TB figure come from?

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/MEG-X399-CREATION/Specification

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

That's because it is common to double the phases.
Or according to speculation from AnandTech: "19 power phases, arranged as 16 for the processor. This is likely a four-phase implementation with two doublers".
And PCPer's take on it: "and is topped by a ludicrous 16+3 power phase (doubled eight for vCore, the remaining phases for vSoC)"

Ok. I was guessing its 16+3.