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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dan82 - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
I wish those boards had more Type C ports and dropped some of those A ports. A type C port can easily be turned in an A, but vice versa is against the spec.Also serious question: what is the reason to keep A 2.0 ports around? Are there any devices that don’t work on modern ports?
jeremyshaw - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
Probably much easier to route one old and slow data pair vs 1-4 high speed data pairs.I have many devices that will likely never need more than USB 2.0 - my Mouse and KB included. USB microphone as well. The best external device I've got that benefits from USB3 speeds is my Bluray burner, and we all know how popular those are. External USB flash drives are usually limited by the cheap NAND inside, and most of my external storage is on my network.
For others, I suppose USB capture cards? Really decent USB 3.0 flash drives? Even if I connected my phone to my PC, it's still limited to USB 2.0. Maybe a decent external card reader? These boards reviewed here are all ATX, so I'll rule out USB NICs. I've got to be missing something in my list.
eek2121 - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
There is still the odd device that doesn't work on USB 3.0. Also the last 2 machines I've built did not have fully functioning USB 3.0/3.1 ports in Linux, indicating lack of driver support for operating systems other than Linux. In short: USB 3.x is still a WIP despite being out on the market for quite a while.Llawehtdliub - Saturday, November 30, 2019 - link
Plz no. Dont do an Apple. Just beczus you cant think of a reason to use doesnt mean others cant.There is a reason to leave them.
dotes12 - Saturday, November 30, 2019 - link
Bring back PS/2 ports too? /sasmian - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
I'm a little confused by comments on the X570 boards that will probably apply to these also. With these new PCIe4 slots (and M.2 slots), is it the case that they are all completely independent and you can mix/match PCIe2/PCIe3/PCIe4 cards/drives freely at each one's maximum possible negotiated link speed? Or will putting (say) a PCIe2 RAID controller in any slot reduce all slots to the lowest common denominator, PCIe2 speed?voicequal - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
PCIe lanes are wired directly to the PCIe controller on either the CPU or chipset, so link speeds between slots are independent. PCIe 4.0 is backward compatible with previous generations 3.0, 2.0 & 1.0, so running a PCIe 2.0 card in a slot capable of 4.0 will run at 2.0 speeds and not affect adjacent lanes on other slots.Some motherboards allow you to reduce the maximum speed of PCIe lanes from 4.0 to something lower -- this can help to troubleshoot signal integrity issues. This setting sometimes does affect lanes across multiple slots. But as long as you leave it to Auto, the lanes will run at the highest compatible speed between card and controller.
WaltC - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
Yes, in most cases the slots auto-configure to the device connected. Gen 3 devices should happily coexist with Gen 4 devices with each running at spec. In the case of the GPU, you can run it at Gen 3 if you prefer even if it is a Gen 4 GPU natively--there's separate switch for that in the bios, but the slots auto-configure for other devices and the GPU bios switch doesn't affect any other slots.I was surprised to see that several of the mboards had no rear clear-CMOS button on their backplates, and thought that was an interesting omission from the article--and the article also failed to mention dual-bios mboards--which the GB Aorus Xtreme & Master have (pictured mechanical switches) --one would hope they all might have them. Seems as if both these important features would be worth a mention...
dotes12 - Saturday, November 30, 2019 - link
Is there any downsides of going to PCIe 4.0? Maybe something similar to DDR3 and DDR4 memory where the bandwidth increases, but the latency goes up too?PopinFRESH007 - Sunday, December 29, 2019 - link
not really no