AMD Q4: 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X, Threadripper Up To 32-Core 3970X, Coming November 25th
by Dr. Ian Cutress on November 7, 2019 9:00 AM ESTTRX40: More High-End Motherboards for TR3
The new sTRX4 socket will be paired with a TRX40 chipset – a design that AMD says comes from an in-house team and built on GlobalFoundries 14nm. The new chipset, updated from the previous X399 in this space and even updated from the X570 in the consumer space, is the other half in the CPU-to-chipset bandwidth story. By using a PCIe 4.0 x8 link, AMD is removing almost any practical bandwidth limitation downstream from the CPU.
The new TRX40 chipset will come with a degree of modularity.
From the chipset, we can see motherboard manufacturers afforded a full PCIe 4.0 x8 slot, up to another x8 lanes as two x4 connections or further bifurcated, or instead of those bifurcated lanes, either four or eight more SATA ports. That’s 8 SATA ports on top of the four already present on the chipset.
So I like these modular systems. It allows motherboard manufacturers to go crazy with offering potential systems. For example:
| Potential TRX40 Variants | |||||||
| AnandTech | CPU | Chipset | |||||
| TRX40 SATA Powerhouse 20 drives |
x48 for PCIe slots | x8 for downlink | 8x SATA from options | x8 for dual NVMe | 8x SATA from options | 4x SATA from chipset | |
| TRX40 NVMe Powerhouse 18+ drives |
x48 for PCIe slots | x8 for downlink | dual NVMe from options | x8 for dual NVMe | dual NVMe for options | - | |
So that would be a motherboard with x16/x16/x16 (or x16/x8/x16/x8) in terms of PCIe 4.0 slots, a single x8 slot for a pair of NVMe drives, and then TWENTY SATA ports, all directly supported on the system without any additional controllers.
If SATA isn’t your thing, then the same arguments could be made for 48 PCIe lanes and six PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe slots, making a total of 18 high capacity PCIe 4.0 drives. The fact that AMD has put more PCIe lanes into their high end desktop platforms, plus this amount of modularity, wants me to play Dr. Frankenstein.
To be fair, those ideas are a bit extreme. Motherboard manufacturers will likely have to partition off a few lanes for 10 GbE networking, perhaps Thunderbolt, or maybe something more exotic like a RAID controller, or an RGB controller.
As noted in some of our previous news posts, motherboard manufacturers have been slowly leaking names of their TRX40 products. At this point in time we have seen mentions of the following:
- ASRock TRX40 Creator
- ASRock TRX40 Taichi
- GIGABYTE TRX40 AORUS XTREME
- ASUS Prime TRX40 Pro
- ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme
- MSI TRX40 Creator
- MSI TRX40 Pro 10G
- MSI TRX40 Pro Wi-Fi
We expect details of some of these to perhaps be announced today, or on the 25th when the CPUs come to market. GIGABYTE has even been showing previews of their motherboards on social media, with one showing an obscene number of power phases, and we’ve seen images of boards with 8 SATA ports. We’ll have our usual motherboard overview article up on that date, and we’ll be looking at reviews of these motherboards through the new year.
I will address comments about potential TRX80/WRX80 motherboards which have been put into the ether as potential other chipsets being launched. When asked, AMD said that the only chipset they are launching today is TRX40.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
171 Comments
View All Comments
Quantumz0d - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
First that TDP bullshit needs to go out of window from marketing when you are pushing for AIO OOTB.~175W vs 9900K 210W both can be handled by a same PSU plus a same chassis and a goddamn DH15. What is this whining and shiny bs of TDP in a Desktop, cTDP yuck. Having reduced performance is bullshit esp on such high core CPU machine this is not a BGA macbook pro soldered garbage we are talking about nor a BIOS chastitized Machine.
Now price, $600 over 3700X ? For a superbinned processor at $800ish ? Why such high price. Also their 3800X doesn't make any sense no one recommends it, GN also ingores it. Yeah AMD just wants to squeeze out all margins, one can understand that due to 7nm costs plus AMD state of CapEx vs Intel. Still their mediocrr perf Improvements over their multi SKU confusion is bad, not to forget the insane expensive X570 chipset on 12nm.
I was in market for this year and I wanted to wait for TR plus Z390 future. Its a shame Z390/9900Kx platform is dead for LGA 12xx now a big kick in nuts that even CPU is outdated. With AMD I was ready for $700 Xtreme purchase too, going to OCN and seeing GB boards having BIOS issues and all of AM4 playing hit and miss with their beta testing bullshit BIOS patches rolling is a hell, to make it worse the DRAM is hit with Speed stability plus overall vCore, Even Trident Z at fclk, mclk, uclk plus DRAM is a huge pain of trial and error just because to get proper perf forget OC and that PBO, XFR2 marketing BS. And Ryzen Master requirement.
Intel Z390 Dark was my choice for other now with dead platform on one side and unstable on one with useless Gen 4..For now, yeah maybe future its good but chipset fan again, all OCN shows high RPM for that.
TR4 again same chipset fan bs with insane price at $1500+ base on top AIO, Mega expensive mobos at over +600.. With zero backwards compatibility, AND once 2021 DDR5 hits it's dead. The $2000 CPU is gone outdated.
HEDT Intel won this time 7xxx to 10xxx and stable platform. Gen 3 x16 2080Ti wont max it out..and Mainstream AMD is better but still expensive and huge fragmentation lineup and unstable.
Will wait for Comet Lake and Zen 4000.
Quantumz0d - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
Higher Vcore & Higher DRAM voltage*Korguz - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
Quantumz0d, wait.. you are calling AMD expensive ?? have you not seen, or remember the prices intel was charging for its cpus before Zen ?? how the fact that going from 9xxx series to 10xxx saw what some might call massive price drops ?? the top chip for 10xxx is 1k less then the 9xxx chips.Death666Angel - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
Anandtech really need an ignore feature in the comments.Spunjji - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
I'd not be seeing fully 50% of them by now. It would be nice.Slash3 - Saturday, November 9, 2019 - link
Very much so.Total Meltdowner - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
Its still 2019.DDR5 is easily almost 1.5-2 years away for average consumer.
TR3 looks like a very solid platform for many HEDT users at a very respectable price.
I think you're overreacting.
I have a 1800x. I was going to buy the 3950x but if the perf isnt that much better I may just get the 3700x and keep everything else the same in the computer.
Waiting for ryzen 4k may be a good idea for you but man that's a long wait.
Spunjji - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
This reads suspiciously like someone trying - at length - to post-hoc rationalize their pre-existing decision not to buy any AMD products. You don't need to justify that irrational desire to anyone else; just go with it! The attempt to do so ends up making you look more biased because you had to pick feeble, irrelevant and/or hypocritical reasons.Sychonut - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
Eagerly looking forward to Intel's 14+++++++.PixyMisa - Thursday, November 7, 2019 - link
So the TRX40 is basically a fully-enabled X570? (That is, a Ryzen 3000 I/O die.)