MSI X99A GAMING Pro Carbon motherboard announced

[HEXUS]

Features front USB 3.1 Type-C, Turbo U.2. and improved Mystic Light LED effects.

Read more.

[Poison]

looks quite smart without the lights on

[azrael-]

What's up with all these light effects gizmos these days...? And on top of that "smartphone-controlled" (16, btw, not 17).

Why does everything need RGB LEDs installed? Makes my eyes bleed. I can see the usefulness of backlighted keyboards, but that's where it ends for me.

[.havoc]

[jimborae]

Pointless imho.

[Ttaskmaster]

Why does everything need RGB LEDs installed? Makes my eyes bleed.

Because they're making stuff just for MEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

To be fair, every single light-up doodad inside my case has a function. Might not be the most practical, but every light tells me something about my system. Part art-form, part the result of watching too much Airwolf and Knight Rider!!

I'm more into LED indicators than light-up words or area effect lighting, though.

[QuorTek]

Nothing wrong with lights... we all love TRON

[OilSheikh]

Nothing wrong with lights... we all love TRON

Speaking of Tron ...

[chuck4100]

Was this released Tuesday as per the article? Or back in january as per MSI release videos and website?

[Gunbuster]

To me its like changing your wallpaper. You want a minimal look, switch off the lights. You want blue, you got blue, and so on.

[whatif]

Apart from my gripes mentioned below, I like several things about this board, the multitude of faster USB ports for one. And I like the overall look of this board.

Can someone tell me why they are still putting SATA express ports onto the boards as I have yet to see a storage drive with SATA express?
Just seems like a waste of effort and space when they could maybe put more SATA ports there which are not linked to the M.2 slot.

Does anyone know if it is possible, with all these on-board LEDs, to have them set to turn on when there is a change such as the CPU reaching a certain temp, etc?
I would prefer them off and to come on to tell me what is happening, that way I can easily notice when the change occurs. I am usually concentrating to much on the screens if I am gaming (plus I use a 10" tablet with a Gigabyte Orion keyboard with multiple coloured key LEDs turned on, so I already have a pile of colours going on in front of me) and are far less likely to notice just a colour change within the case, than to have a dark case suddenly have a colour come on.

Also, if they are bringing out a version 2 of this Gen 5 processor, am I to presume that there will be no Gen 6 processor with more than 4 cores?
And, has anyone heard why they haven't yet put more RAM slots onto any of the Gen 6 boards?
Or are they holding off for a Gen 7 processor?
I am still running a z97 board (left wondering what to upgrade to when I finally get some money spare) and are slightly confused by how the manufacturing is proceeding.