The ASRock X399 Professional Gaming Motherboard Review: 10G For All
by E. Fylladitakis on July 5, 2018 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- Gigabyte
- ASRock
- Asus
- 10GBase-T
- ThreadRipper
- X399
ASRock X399 Professional Gaming Board Features
The ASRock X399 Professional Gaming is a motherboard designed to entice gamers and sports a host of features, yet some of these features will be of little to no interest to the motherboard's intended target group. For example, the motherboard has three NICs installed, one of them being AQUANTIA's AQC107 10Gbps, plus an Intel 3168NGW 1×1 AC card. Very few gamers will be interested on having three separate NICs but nearly all of them would prefer a single gaming-specific NIC to be present. ASRock's design choices increased the price tag of the X399 Professional Gaming up to $440, making it one of the most expensive AMD X399 motherboards currently available.
| ASRock Fatal1ty X399 Professional Gaming | |
| Warranty Period | 3 Years |
| Product Page | Link |
| Price | Link |
| Size | ATX |
| CPU Interface | TR4 / SP3r2 |
| Chipset | AMD X399 |
| Memory Slots (DDR4) | Eight DDR4 Supporting 128GB Quad Channel Up to 3600+ MHz |
| Video Outputs | N/A |
| Network Connectivity | 1 × AQUANTIA AQC107 10Gbit 2 x Intel I211-V 1 x Intel AC 3168NGW Wi-Fi |
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC1220A |
| PCIe Slots for Graphics (from CPU) | 4 × PCIe 3.0 (×16 / ×8 / ×16 / ×8) |
| PCIe Slots for Other (from PCH) | 1 × PCIe 2.0 (×1) |
| Onboard SATA | Eight, RAID 0/1/5/10 |
| Onboard SATA Express | None |
| Onboard M.2 | 3 × PCIe 3.0 (x4) |
| Onboard U.2 | 1 × U.2 Connector (×4) |
| USB 3.1 Gen 2 | 1 × Type-C 1 × Type-A |
| USB 3.1 Gen 1 | 8 × Type-A Rear Panel 4 ×Type-A via headers |
| USB 2.0 | 4 × via headers |
| Power Connectors | 1 x 24-pin ATX 1 x 8-pin CPU 1 x 4-pin CPU |
| Fan Headers | 1 x CPU (4-pin) 1 x Pump/Aux (4-pin) 3 x System (4-pin), one supports liquid-cooling pumps |
| IO Panel | 8 x USB 3.0 (USB 3.1 Gen 1) 1 x USB 3.1 Type-A 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C 2 x Network RJ-45 2 x Antenna connectors 1 x Combo PS/2 5 x 3.5 mm Audio Jacks 1 x Optical SPDIF Out Port |
In The Box
We get the following:
- Driver Disk
- Quick Installation Guide
- User's manual
- Case Badge
- Four black SATA cables (two straight, two with a 90° connector)
- SLI/Crossfire bridges
- Wireless antennas
- I/O Shield
The bundle of the ASRock X399 Professional Gaming is relatively poor, taking into consideration the retail price of the motherboard, and the focus on gamers. Inside the box, we found a comprehensive manual and a quick installation guide, only four SATA cables, two simple wireless antennas without extension cords, the I/O shield, and three SLI bridges for two/three/four-way SLI configurations. Aside from the low number of SATA cables and the very basic wireless antennas, there were no cable straps, quick connectors, or any other useful accessories that are typically found accompanying top-tier motherboards.
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bug77 - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
"However, with a price tag of $440, the X399 Professional Gaming also is one of the most expensive Ryzen Threadripper motherboards available."And yet, the title of the article says it's "for all".
Also, Threadripper is a rather poor choice for gaming. Even if you're streaming, you don't need that many cores. Threadripper is really good is you massively edit photo or edit video or do 3D rendering and few other specialized things. But not for much else.
This is not a criticism, with today's CPU one has to carefully weigh whether they need more cores or faster cores, depending on their usage patterns. There no universal solution like there was back in the single-core CPUs day. (And even then, if you didn't need FPU performance, a much cheaper AMD CPU could have been the better pick.)
Myrandex - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
Eh the original single core Athlon 64 CPUs even had pretty banging FPU performance back in the day too.bug77 - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
True, but the original K6 didn't ;)DanNeely - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
It's "10G For All", the for all is attached to the 10G ethernet support, meaning it's a thread-ripper board with 10G for both gaming and work station use. It's more expensive than general use boards of either category because the 10G controller is still seriously expensive. If you don't need 10G ethernet, it's probably not the board you want because of the price premium attached for it.bug77 - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
So... it's not for all.eek2121 - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
I would have to disagree there. Windows has hundreds of thousands of processes running in the background and when Threadripper is set up properly it performs great with gaming. Even if you do able 8 of the cores you can easily beat out the 1800X from an IPC perspective thanks to lower cache latencies (Threadripper has similar cache latencies to the 2700X). The higher XFR boost (4200hz), slightly better IPC, quad channel memory, and more cores means a better gaming experience than the 1800X...if you can afford it.bug77 - Friday, July 6, 2018 - link
I didn't say it performs poorly. But perf/$ isn't the best for many workflows.Marlin1975 - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
It says Creative SoundBlaster on the cover yet the description says Onboard Audio Realtek ALC1220A?This just some marketing/software so it makes it seem nicer?
tmediaphotography - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
"It supports the Sound Blaster Cinema 3 software"Realtek hardware, but anyone who is perversely attached the Creative Labs software can feel free to install and use the Cinema 3 software.
DanNeely - Thursday, July 5, 2018 - link
Sound blaster switched from custom hardware to just being a custom driver for other audio hardware a few years ago.