Wow, I just looked at this in detail and I have to say I'm quite disappointed.
<rant>
The X99 Micro and X99 Micro2 could run a x16 / x16 / x8 configuration with the 40-lane CPUs, but the X299 Micro is limited to at most x16 / x16 / x4. So that rules out spaced SLI since NVIDIA requires at least x8 on each card for SLI.
And why on earth would they waste space and lanes on a U.2 port is beyond me, anybody could have seen U.2 was a dead end a year ago. They should have either wired up that x4 to the bottom slot so the slots aren't a downgrade in that regard, or at least use it for a second M.2 instead and bundle or sell a M.2 to U.2 adapter for that one guy who needs it.
If you don't use U.2 (which would be most people) then there's only one M.2, so it's no improvement over the X99 Micro2. Yet to add insult to injury, the SATA situation has somehow degraded as well, dropping from 10x to 6x. Having 10 SATA ports was a bit silly anyway, but still, storage on this board makes no sense.
And the USB 3.0 header is still in that stupid location at the bottom right, so it'll interfere with mosts dual-slot video cards when installed in the second slot.
</rant>
<rant>
The X99 Micro and X99 Micro2 could run a x16 / x16 / x8 configuration with the 40-lane CPUs, but the X299 Micro is limited to at most x16 / x16 / x4. So that rules out spaced SLI since NVIDIA requires at least x8 on each card for SLI.
And why on earth would they waste space and lanes on a U.2 port is beyond me, anybody could have seen U.2 was a dead end a year ago. They should have either wired up that x4 to the bottom slot so the slots aren't a downgrade in that regard, or at least use it for a second M.2 instead and bundle or sell a M.2 to U.2 adapter for that one guy who needs it.
If you don't use U.2 (which would be most people) then there's only one M.2, so it's no improvement over the X99 Micro2. Yet to add insult to injury, the SATA situation has somehow degraded as well, dropping from 10x to 6x. Having 10 SATA ports was a bit silly anyway, but still, storage on this board makes no sense.
And the USB 3.0 header is still in that stupid location at the bottom right, so it'll interfere with mosts dual-slot video cards when installed in the second slot.
</rant>
One would expect focus and direction to be key for smaller than ATX boards but mATX boards haven't had much logic and foresight in the higher-end segment. It's as if they design an ATX boards first, some ITX boards last and after some parts are still left in the warehouse, they make an mATX board.
Oh good, they did fix the CPU socket being way too close to the top PCIe slot and preventing many heatsinks from fitting. So there has been some improvements
Someone should have mentioned that to SuperMicro for their X299 board...
The keepout zone is fine, that's the square outline around the socket so theyre within spec.
It was a conscious decision to improve performance of the PCIe slot by reducing the trace length. I think that's a silly optimization though because GPUs are not bottlenecked by that at all.
That's insane! I guess they're used to designing for 1U heat sinks that take up no space beyond the socket itself.
Someone should have mentioned that to SuperMicro for their X299 board...
"Designed for liquid cooling" is an anti-feature.
I have no idea, and I can't seem to get in touch with EVGA regarding a review sample either
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