Msi x299 tomahawk arctic review in Spanish (full analysis)

With fresh air the MSI X299 Tomahawk Arctic motherboard arrived at our office . Its design makes you fall in love at first sight and one of its incentives is that it has a very attractive price of 265 euros to be from the current enthusiastic platform from Intel (LGA 2066). We have tested it with the new i9-7900X ! Many of you may be wondering: How will it perform? Will it be enough for these powerful i9 or is it more focused on the Intel Core i7 or i5?

We will solve all this and much more in our analyzes. Here we go!

We thank MSI Spain for trusting the product for its analysis:

MSI X299 Tomahawk Arctic technical features

Unboxing and design

The MSI X299 Tomahawk Arctic arrives packed in a cardboard box with a white design. On its cover we find an image of the motherboard and the model we have acquired is well detailed.

While in the rear area we have all the most important technical characteristics.

Inside we find the following bundle

MSI X299 Tomahawk Arctic motherboard. Back plate. Instruction manual and quick guide. CD disk with drivers. Set of SATA cables. Cable SLI HB.

The motherboard is presented with the new LGA 2066 socket and the Intel X299 chipset that is compatible with the new Intel Kaby Lake-X and Intel Skylake-X processors manufactured in 14nm. Both in its i5, i7 and upcoming i9 versions.

To install the Asus Prime X299-A we will have no problem, since it has an ATX format with dimensions of 30.4 cm x 22.4 cm. Its design is much more elegant than other models we have tried, it only highlights the white color and the turquoise blue color that will combine great with almost any component on the market that we install.

Rear view for those users who want to see every last detail.

We are already entering refrigeration and we can see that it is divided into two key areas: power supply phases and another for the new X299 chipset. It has a total of 9 power phases supported by Military Class technology with quality capacitors, Japanese capacitors and CHOKES. On the power it has an 8-pin EPS connection and the main 24-pin to guarantee the best possible overclock both in the CPU and in the RAM memories. Be careful, we recommend not exceeding the i9-7900X, since it would be the limit for the power offered by this motherboard.

It has a total of 8 DDR4 RAM sockets on Quad Channel. These are compatible up to 128 GB with frequencies of up to 4133 Mhz and XMP 2.0 profile. In the event that you choose an Intel Core i5-7640X or the Intel Core i7-7740X it will limit you to 64GB of RAM and its operation in Dual Channel.

The MSI X299 Tomahawk Arctic has a layout of 4 PCI Express x16 connections compatible with 3 Way for both AMD or Nvidia graphics cards. In addition, it has two PCI Express x1 connections that allow expansion with expansion cards (sound, gaming capturers, etc…).

You could not miss the metal armor "PCI-E Steel Armor" in PCI Express connections. This technology improves the transfer of the cards connected in these slots and even that it does not escape in extreme situations. We remember when a few months ago, the guys from MSI showed us when they placed a motherboard with an MSI Gaming X graphics card upside down without flinching.

Regarding high-speed storage, it has two slots for the M.2 NVMe connection that allows us to install any SSD of this format with the measures 2242/2260/2280/22110 (42/60/80 and 110mm). Allowing us to make a RAID 0.1 or 5.

The second SLOT M.2 is hidden in the chipset heatsink. This method is widely used by many manufacturers, in this way it cools the NVME disk and the chipset at the same time. The results are pretty good and we always recommend installing the M.2 PCI Express drive here.

The motherboard comes standard with an 8-channel sound card along with a Realtek ALC1220 chipset and Audio Boost IV technology. We've already seen it on previous models, offering premium components with 8 channels, a high-impedance headphone amp and really useful management software.

Let's not forget that it also incorporates a total of 8 SATA III connections at 6Gbp / s that allows us to have enough hard drives and SSDs in our system. For the price it has, it seems like a great option.

Finally, we leave you all the rear connections that it integrates:

Button to make Clear CMOS PS / 2 connector for mouse or keyboard. 7 x USB 3.0.1 x LAN (RJ45) 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A1 x USB Type-C5 x Audio + fiber audio outputs

Test bench and tests

TESTING BENCH
Processor:	Intel Core i9-7900X
Base plate:	MSI X299 Tomahawk Arctic
Memory:	64 GB Corsair LPX DDR4 3600 MHz
Heatsink	Corsair H100i V2.
HDD	Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB .
Graphic card	MSI GTX 1080 Ti Gaming X Trio.
Power supply	Corsair AX860i .

To check the stability of the Intel Core i9-7900X processor at stock speeds, 3200 MHz memories, the motherboard we have stressed with Prime 95 Custom and we have used a Corsair H100i V2 cooling.

The graph that we have used is an MSI GTX1080 Ti Gamig X Trio, without further delay, let's see the results obtained in our tests with a 1920 x 1080 monitor.

BIOS

MSI continues to demonstrate that it builds very robust BIOSes for the enthusiastic platform of Intel. We really like that it allows us to monitor and adjust any parameters at all levels: overclocking, ventilation, voltage, temperatures, booting of hard drives and much more. Good job!

Final words and conclusion about MSI X299 Tomahawk Arctic

The MSI X299 Tomahawk Arctic It is a mid-range motherboard for the LGA 2066 platform and the new Intel Core i9 processors. It predominates with good internal components and a very attractive glacial arctic color design for the end user.

Although we believe that the maximum processor you should install would be a 10-core i9-7900X, since it only has an 8-pin EPS connection, and it is recommended to have 8 + 6/8 extra power pins for these monstrous processors.

We recommend reading the best motherboards on the market

In our tests we have been able to verify its excellent performance with the new MSI GTX 1080X Gaming X Trio graphics card (which we will see soon in our analysis), our i9-7900X, 64 GB of DDR4 memory at 3600 MHz and a Corsair H100i V2 cooling. In games it has given a great result and with overclock we reach 4.2 GHz in all cores.

We also highlight its Audio Boost 4 sound card with high-end headphone compatibility, Safe Slot enhancement on PCI Express x16 connections, and passive cooling on the main M.2 Slot.

Currently we can find it available in online stores for a price of 269 euros. We think it is a good price for everything it offers and is ideal for the new 6 and 8 core i7s. We continue to encourage MSI to release more models with this white PCB design, it gives a different and very glamorous touch to our PC.

ADVANTAGE	DISADVANTAGES
+ VERY NICE DESIGN.	- WE WOULD HAVE LIKED TWO EPS CONNECTIONS.
+ GOOD COMPONENTS.
+ OVERCLOCK CAPACITY.
+ STABLE BIOS.
+ IMPROVED SOUND AND REFRIGERATION IN THE M.2