The ASRock X399 Taichi Motherboard Review: Cost-Effective Threadripper
by E. Fylladitakis on October 26, 2018 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- ASRock
- ThreadRipper
- X399
Board Features
The ASRock X399 Taichi is a motherboard that was designed to cover the needs of as many users as possible, without explicit focus on any precise user's group, such as gamers, overclockers, or professionals. It has an excellent audio circuitry, dual Gigabit LAN and USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports, as well as three M.2 slots, one U.2 port, and eight SATA ports. What it does not have is any of the latest features that we see on top-tier motherboards, like 10G LAN and 802.11ad WiGig, which are what significantly increases the manufacturing cost and, ultimately, the retail price of those motherboards.
| ASRock X399 Taichi | |
| 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 Dual Channel Up to 3600+ MHz |
| Video Outputs | N/A |
| Network Connectivity | 2 x Intel I211-V 1 x Intel 3168 802.11ac |
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC 1220 |
| 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 (×4) |
| Onboard U.2 | 1 × U.2 Connector (×4) |
| USB 3.1 Gen 2 | 1 × Type-C + 1 × Type-A (Rear panel) |
| 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 1 × 6-pin PCIe |
| Fan Headers | 1 x CPU (4-pin) 1 x Pump/Aux (4-pin) 2 x System (4-pin) 1 x System (4-pin) w/ liquid cooling pump support |
| 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 5 x 3.5 mm Audio Jacks 1 x Optical SPDIF Out Port 1 x Flashback CMOS button |
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 (2, 3, and 4-Way)
- Wireless antennas
- I/O Shield
The bundle of the ASRock X399 Taichi is simple and straightforward, without superfluities. Inside the box, we found a simple 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. Users will have to purchase their own SATA cables in order to use more than four SATA devices. There are no cable straps, quick connectors, stickers, or any other luxuries included.
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The_Assimilator - Friday, October 26, 2018 - link
Board Features/"In The Box" claims that you get Crossfire bridges with this board, but that's not reflected in the picture, plus bridgeless Crossfire has been a thing for years.Pretty luxurious of Asrock to include a 4-way SLI bridge, though... even if SLI is dead with RTX.
GreenReaper - Sunday, October 28, 2018 - link
I think the points just go through the board and the attachment plugs can go on either side, Maybe to store them in transit, or to discourage use of that slot because it gets disabled by the U.2 connector?Maryjohn0192 - Saturday, October 27, 2018 - link
good oneAntonErtl - Saturday, October 27, 2018 - link
I would have liked to see some information about ECC support. Does the board support it officially? Does the Linux kernel report that ECC is enabled if you supply ECC memory (and not if not)?kobblestown - Monday, October 29, 2018 - link
It does support ECC officially - that's what it says on the site and in the user manual. I have access to a TR machine with Asrock X399 Professional Gaming which is the same board as the Taichi but with a 10G Ethernet chip. The machine is equipped with 4x16GB ECC@2400MHz/s modules from Kingston. There are several BIOS options that seem related to ECC but there's no description of these options in the manual. Anyway, the kernel seems to be aware of the ECC. Here's a snippet from dmesg:EDAC amd64: Node 0: DRAM ECC enabled.
EDAC amd64: F17h detected (node 0).
EDAC MC: UMC0 chip selects:
EDAC amd64: MC: 0: 0MB 1: 0MB
EDAC amd64: MC: 2: 16383MB 3: 16383MB
EDAC amd64: MC: 4: 0MB 5: 0MB
EDAC amd64: MC: 6: 0MB 7: 0MB
EDAC MC: UMC1 chip selects:
EDAC amd64: MC: 0: 0MB 1: 0MB
EDAC amd64: MC: 2: 16383MB 3: 16383MB
EDAC amd64: MC: 4: 0MB 5: 0MB
EDAC amd64: MC: 6: 0MB 7: 0MB
EDAC amd64: using x8 syndromes.
EDAC amd64: MCT channel count: 2
EDAC MC0: Giving out device to module amd64_edac controller F17h: DEV 0000:00:18.3 (INTERRUPT)
EDAC amd64: Node 1: DRAM ECC enabled.
EDAC amd64: F17h detected (node 1).
EDAC MC: UMC0 chip selects:
EDAC amd64: MC: 0: 0MB 1: 0MB
EDAC amd64: MC: 2: 16383MB 3: 16383MB
EDAC amd64: MC: 4: 0MB 5: 0MB
EDAC amd64: MC: 6: 0MB 7: 0MB
EDAC MC: UMC1 chip selects:
EDAC amd64: MC: 0: 0MB 1: 0MB
EDAC amd64: MC: 2: 16383MB 3: 16383MB
EDAC amd64: MC: 4: 0MB 5: 0MB
EDAC amd64: MC: 6: 0MB 7: 0MB
EDAC amd64: using x8 syndromes.
EDAC amd64: MCT channel count: 2
EDAC MC1: Giving out device to module amd64_edac controller F17h: DEV 0000:00:19.3 (INTERRUPT)
EDAC PCI0: Giving out device to module amd64_edac controller EDAC PCI controller: DEV 0000:00:18.0 (POLLED)
AMD64 EDAC driver v3.5.0
CyrIng - Sunday, October 28, 2018 - link
What about Linux and FreeBSD?Can we have a review of Threadripper motherboards with some Kernel build benchmark for example?
kobblestown - Monday, October 29, 2018 - link
If you are interested in running Linux on TR you should check phoronix.com - they have benchmarks that are much more varied than what they do here.There is something else to note though - the experience has not been flawless for me. I snatched a 1920X at the time the 2990WX was announced a couple of months back for a great price that is no longer available and married it to an Asrock Fatal1ty X399 Professional Gaming with 4x8GB G.Skill 15-15-15-sth@3000MHz (not the machine from my post above). First of all, it takes ages to boot. That seem to be common for TR builds and is a bit annoying. But what annoys me the most is that the BIOS resets all settings every time you plug, unplug or change any PCIe/NVME device (not sure about the SATA since I rely on NVME entirely). The best approach is to save your settings (there are several save slots) and recall from there. Otherwise it's too much trouble because there are tons of options and most are not documented anywhere. I'm not even talking about overclocking - the machine is a beast even at stock freqs.
Also, you'd want to make sure that you run the latest BIOS/AGESA - for example the one the board came with did not allow for 3000MHz - only 2933 and 3066 (among others). The latest AGESA fixed this and my G.Skill which not validated for Ryzen works just fine. However, this latest version has some problem with the latest Linux kernels - for instance I couldn't run the Ubuntu 18.10 installer because of this kernel problem that can only be solved with custom compiled kernel (i.e. not with a boot option IIRC). OTOH, 18.04 runs just fine. I want to experiment with VGA passthrough and I have the hardware but haven't got the time yet. One thing to note is that all four network adapters (2x1G + 10G + WiFi) are in the same IOMMU group. It would have been nice to have the wired adapters in separate groups so I can assign them to different VMs but I think virtio-net will not break too much sweat on such a powerful machine.
CyrIng - Monday, October 29, 2018 - link
Thanks a lot for sharing this Linux experience.Phoenix is indeed a good Foss source but less hardware gifted as Anandtech.
As a System programmer, I would enjoy too see benchmarks dealing with Buildroot, FS squashing, cryptography support, big project compilation time and so on
Buying such hardware for a total of 1=3 $K claims à lot of details...
Regards
cyberguyz - Wednesday, October 31, 2018 - link
I have one of them. It works ok. Has problems running my GSkill TridentZ 3200 CL14 memory at XMP speeds without boosting memory voltage to 1.45v. Also it is a pain in the a$$ when it comes time to try out different settings since the only way to reset cmos is to open the system up and push a tiny little easy to miss button hear the onboard reset & power buttons. An external button like many of the competitors use would have been a real relief from that hassle.