The AMD TRX40 Motherboard Overview: 12 New Motherboards Analyzed
by Gavin Bonshor on November 28, 2019 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- MSI
- Gigabyte
- ASRock
- Asus
- TRX40
- Threadripper 3000
- Castle Peak
GIGABYTE TRX40 Aorus Pro WIFI
Moving our way down the GIGABYTE TRX40 product stack, we have the GIGABYTE TRX40 Aorus Pro WIFI which represents its entry-level model at launch with a good feature set but drops some of the higher-end components to undoubtedly save users money who may not need or require things like 10 GbE. This doesn't mean the feature set isn't good quality as there is an Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 wireless interface, three PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, and support for DDR4-4400 memory across eight slots.
The GIGABYTE TRX40 Aorus Pro WIFI and TRX40 Master share a very similar aesthetic with black metallic heatsinks on an all-black PCB, although the GIGABYTE TRX40 Aorus Pro WIFI is using a standard ATX sized PCB. There are eight memory slots which support up to DDR4-4400 and up to 256 GB in total, with two sets of four slots flanking either side of the sTRX4 CPU socket. All three of GIGABYTE's launch day TRX40 boards are using the high-end Infineon XDPE132G5C 16-phase PWM controller operating at 12+2. The CPU section of the power delivery is a 14-phase design which consists of twelve Infineon TDA21472 70 A power stages for the CPU. Providing power to the CPU is an 8-pin and 6-pin pair of 12 V ATX CPU power inputs.
Cooling the TRX40 chipset is an actively cooled heatsink, while the boards three PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots each include an M.2 heatshield. For users looking to use SATA drives, the GIGABYTE TRX40 Aorus Pro WIFI has eight SATA ports which support RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays, and are controlled by the TRX40 chipset. Located around the board is eight 4-pin headers which are split into three main sections; one for a CPU fan, one for a water pump, and six for chassis fans. Utilizing as many of the PCIe lanes from the CPU are four full-length PCIe 4.0 slots which operate at x16/x8/x16+x8, with a single PCIe 4.0 x1 slot for good measure.
Unlike the other models in the GIGABYTE TRX40 product stack, the TRX40 Aorus Pro WIFI has a single Ethernet port controlled by an Intel Gigabit controller. For users looking for wireless support, GIGABYTE has included an Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 wireless interface which also features BT 5.0 connectivity. Looking at USB support and there is five USB 3.1 G2 Type-A, one USB 3.1 G2 Type-C, and four USB 2.0 ports. Nestled on the left-hand side of the USB 3.1 G2 Type-C port is a small Q-Flash Plus button, while the five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output are powered by a pair of Realtek HD audio codecs; an ALC4050H and an ALC1220-VB.
The GIGABYTE TRX40 Aorus Pro WIFI isn't as high-end as its other launch day counterparts, but it still offers a cheaper alternative to users looking to utilize the high core count and power of the Threadripper 3000 processors with an MSRP of $399. Users looking to build a high-core high-thread-count gaming system will be hard pushed to find a better value TRX40 model at launch.
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plonk420 - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
looks like the two ASRock and at least two, if not three of the three MSI use LOTES sockets. i expect FOXCONN to be the same trash that freaked me the f out trying to screw down the CPU cover on my X399 Designare EX (see HardOCP's Kyle having the same difficulty tightening his down, but mine seemed even worse).omasoud - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
Although ASRock TRX40 Creator is classified as ATX, the last PCI slot probably cannot take a double-width card (even though the manual on page 41 talks about installing 4 SLI double-width GPUs). ATX size specification says 7 PCI slots; but 4x2=8. Am I right?Llawehtdliub - Saturday, November 30, 2019 - link
Good review, thank you.solomonshv - Saturday, November 30, 2019 - link
do you guys think that the MSI TRX40 Pro would be a good candidate for a 3960X with some light overclocking? i've had multiple really bad experiences with gigafail, and if you check gigbayte x399 reviews on newegg, amazon and other places, other people did too. so gigabyte is a hard pass for me.dwade123 - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
Prices are going up and up with AMD, much more than anything Intel had ever priced. Zenith II is $850 and TR flagship model is expected to be at least $4000. AMD "wins again" but will AMD fans win yet?Qasar - Sunday, December 1, 2019 - link
dwade123, and look what intel did to the prices before they released zen. how much were you paying for QUAD core cpus, where the performance increase over the previous gen was 10% or less. intel cant complete with amd in multi thread performance, the ONLY way intel has any performance advantage over amd, is due to clock speed, thats all..imagine where intel cpu's would be if there was NO Zen....
scineram - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
Yes.Korguz - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
dwade123 " Prices are going up and up with AMD, much more than anything Intel had ever priced " you sure about that ?? intels top end i9 chips were VERY expensive here, most of their i7 line was also expensive... but yet.. HOW was intel able to drop the prices like they HAD to do with the 10xxx series over the 9xxx series ??? people now complain that amd is priced to high, where were all of these people when intel was priced just as high, if not higher ??? it seems.. its ok for intel to do something.. but when amd does it.. all of a sudden its wrong and its a crime?? come on...intel cant compete with amd in almost everything now, the ONLY thing intel has left, is single thread performance, and even that, isnt by that much, and its ONLY cause of clock speed.. its about time amd was able to charge what they are for some of their chips, because the performance is there.. when intel catches up, intel will probably charge the same.. dwade123, you better be complaining about intels prices then as well....prophet001 - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
Why the heck would you use the same physical socket keying.Korguz - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
the socket is the same.. but the pins i think are different