Mats Svensson :
Why do all these boards only have ONE lousy USB-C port ??
Its the USB1-> USB2-> USB3 thing all over again.
Who wants X of the latest, plus Y of the old, plus Z of the even older, plus 1 of the even even older, all the way back?
Just give me 10 USB-C ports, and throw in a baggie with cheap adapters in the box of the first generations or so.
Two simple words: bandwidth and money.
First, read Intel's specifications on the
X99 chipset. Next, if you haven't already, go read that
USB primer article mentioned. You may learn something. Specifically, you may learn what controllers X99 offers and all the different standards and ways USB 3.1 can be used.
Done reading? Good. Let's continue.
First, the easy part, is to see that X99 only lists six USB 3.0 ports in its specs. So, in order for you to get your 10 ports, you'd have to use additional USB controllers on the mboard. Every new controller added requires more money in making the board.
Second, that's only USB 3.0, which is 5 Gbps max. That's not 3.1 Gen 2 of 10 Gbps. So that means not only do you need more USB controllers, you need more expensive controllers.
Third, do you just want regular data USB, do you want power delivery USB, do you want DisplayPort over USB capabilities? Again, each of these would require driving up the price of the board more. Oh, and that's in addition to the money for throwing in a bunch of USB interface adapters.
Finally, why do you want ten 3.1 Gen2 ports? What do you need them for? The only thing that needs that much bandwidth is an external flash drive or a fast refresh high-resolution display. You're going to have ten of those running simultaneously? You'll hit a bottleneck trying to do that as the chipset itself can't handle that much data at once. Everything will be cut back so it won't matter if things are Gen 1 or Gen 2.
The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of USB devices and peripherals now and in the immediate future don't need even 3.0, let alone 3.1 Gen 2. Mice and keyboards are fine with USB 1.1 still. Printers, scanners, network adapters, all are fine at 2.0 speeds. Only external flash storage devices and possibly displays can benefit from the 10 Gbps speed of Gen 2. And despite how much some people complain about it, they don't run a bunch of those devices all at once.
MSI and other manufacturers are making very reasonable decisions on the back panels. You get a few 2.0 ports for your keyboard, mouse, and printer, a handful of 3.0/3.1 Gen 1 ports for your thumb drives and external hard drives, and two Gen 2 ports for the off chance you'll have one or two devices to use them.
Please stop acting like mboard mfrs are in collusion to hold consumers back. If anything, the recent Skylake non-K overclocking hubbub suggests the mfrs are trying to bring features to their customers, even if it risks making giant industry corporations upset.
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