MSI Creator X299 Motherboard Review! | Level One Techs

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This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://level1techs.com/video/msi-creator-x299-motherboard-review
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Thanks for showing the diagram of data paths at 5:15. Curious about the switches for the PCIE slots, I checked the manual and found a little more info. With CPUs having 44 or 48 PCIe lanes:

  • The first two PCIe slots are either x16/x0 or x8/x8;
  • Two M.2 slots connect directly to the CPU;
  • With a 44-lane CPU, the last PCIe slot changes from x8 to x4 if a drive is present in the second M.2 slot.

That still seems like a pretty nice configuration and board. Thanks for a very interesting review.

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Sorry to revive an old topic. Cascade lake X Processor availability has been a challenge. I grabbed this mobo and @wendell had mentioned that he slapped in some samsung ssd’s and they “worked.” I was looking for some clarification about the unlocked vroc capabilities of this board. I threw some samsung 970 evos into this board and they show up in the bios as “raid unsupported” I was hoping to get a little clarification, if you can remember back, about the board setup and if a bootable raid 0 is possible on this board with NVME ssds that are not on intel’s supported list.

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I think this was fixed in a bios update. You can also get vroc keys on eBay now super cheap

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Thanks for the reply! I actually have a VROC STDMOD key plugged in right now and my board shows the license as standard, but the drives still show as “RAID Unsupported.” I’ll give some other bios versions a try. Thanks anyway!

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There is maybe a bios option that let’s you designare if it’s raid or not by slot # so set that and make sure?

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Ah sorry for the lapse in conversation. I did setup birfurcation for the pcie slot with the nvmes and they all showed up, it was the VROC option in the bios that was telling me the drives were incompatible. I ultimately wound up going with a windows stripe. I tried both the samsung PM and SM 961 which are both on the VROC third part compatibility list and tried an Asus Rampage Extreme Encore and that motherboard actually returned the drives as being unsupported for me as well even with the VROC key, so I’m at a loss. I guess bootable VROC raid isn’t happening for me this build. I appreciate the responses and the support though, Thank you!

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