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
MSI TRX40 Pro 10G & TRX40 Pro WIFI
Slightly down the pecking order and below the MSI Creator TRX40 are the MSI TRX40 Pro 10G and TRX40 Pro WIFI motherboards. Both with identical aesthetics and core feature sets, the differences between both models come down to networking support. Both motherboards come with dual Intel I211-AT Gigabit Ethernet controllers on the rear panel, but the TRX40 Pro 10G comes with an Aquantia AQC107 10 Gigabit Ethernet add-in card, while the TRX40 Pro WIFI includes an Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 wireless interface.
The design of the MSI TRX40 Pro 10G and TRX40 Pro WIFI follow the same black and grey design which stretches across the heatsinks and the PCB for a professional and uniformed look. The TRX40 chipset heatsink features active cooling, while just to the right hand of this is a two-digit LED debugger. Dotted around the edge of the PCB is six 4-pin headers with one designated for a CPU fan, one for a water pump, and four designed for chassis fans. The power delivery for both the MSI TRX40 Pro WIFI and TRX40 Pro 10G the CPU consists of a 12-phase design with 12 Intersil ISL99390 90 A power stages with 6 ISL6617 doublers and is controlled by an Intersil ISL69247 PWM controller. Providing power to the CPU is a pair of 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power connectors.
Both models contain the exact same core feature set which includes four full-length PCIe 4.0 slots which run at x16/x8/x16+x8, with a single PCIe 4.0 x1 slot also included. There are two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 with heatsinks on the board itself, while an M.2 Xpander-Z Gen4 add-on card allows users to install up to two more PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 drives into a full-length PCIe 4.0 slot. Also present is eight SATA ports which support RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays. Memory support is exactly the same as the MSI Creator TRX40 with up to DDR4-4666 1DPC 1R, and up to DDR4-3866 2DPC 2R, with up to 256 GB supported across the eight memory slots.
MSI TRX40 Pro WIFI rear panel (Pro 10G is exactly the same, minus the Intel AX200 Wi-Fi)
The only differences between both models are the rear panel; the Pro 10G has no Wi-Fi, while the Pro WIFI includes an Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 wireless interface which includes BT 5.0 connectivity. On the USB side is three USB 3.1 G2 Type-A, four USB 3.1 G1 Type-A, and one USB 3.2 G2 20 Gbps Type-C port. Both rear panels have two Intel I211-AT Gigabit Ethernet controllers, while the 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output are powered by a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec; a secondary Realtek ALC4050H audio codec powers the 3.5 mm microphone input and the front panel audio. The MSI TRX40 Pro 10G comes with an Aquantia AQC107 Ethernet controller add-on
The MSI TRX40 Pro 10 GbE has an MSRP of $500., while the MSI TRX40 Pro WIFI has a cost $470. Both models do feature identical features aside from networking. The M.2 Xpander-Z Gen4 PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot add-on card comes with both models and is a nice touch for users looking to add extra M.2 drives, at the expense of one of the full-length PCIe 4.0 slots. Both models are aimed at professionals with the design and feature set, but both models will appeal to gamers looking to build a system with the high-core count advantage of the Threadripper 3000 series, and on AMD's latest HEDT platform.
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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