In our ongoing coverage of Intel's enthusiast-oriented X99 LGA2011-3 platform, we are very pleased to bring you our very first review of one of MSI's popular Gaming Series motherboards. This product line has been on the market for a fair number of years now, and as its name implies, it is focused on the particular needs of gamers. The model that we are focusing on today is the X99S Gaming 7, which falls just below the flagship X99S Gaming 9 and X99S XPOWER AC in MSI's X99 motherboard lineup.

When compared to the $470 ASUS X99 Deluxe and the $440 EVGA X99 Classified that we have reviewed thus far, the MSI X99S Gaming 7 is downright affordable at around $315. What do you lose in exchange for that $100+ rebate? In practical terms, not as much as you would expect. Although this motherboard features four PCI-E x16 slots, it is limited to 3-way CrossFire/SLI due to the fact that some PCI-E lanes are being diverted in order to expand this model's high-speed storage capabilities. Given the microscopic amount of users who would ever even consider a four graphics card setup, this seems like a worthwhile trade-off to us...especially since that's about the only obvious shortcoming.