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 Creator TRX40
To complement the release of AMD's Ryzen 7 nm Threadripper 3000, MSI has released three models. The first of the three and undoubtedly its flagship is the MSI Creator TRX40. Designed for and marketed towards content creators, the Creator TRX40 three integrated PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, with a further four PCIe 4.0 x4 slots available via the included M.2 Xpander-Aero Gen4 add-on card in the accessories bundle. Other primary features include 10 GbE, a 16-phase power delivery for the CPU, and 20 Gbps USB 3.2 on the rear panel.
The biggest aspect of the design is the use of a two-tone grey and black theme throughout, including the rear panel cover, the heatsinks, and the PCB itself. The rear panel cover has integrated RGB LED lighting which can be customized with MSI's Mystic Light RGB software, while the design implementations look interesting with the M.2. On the E-ATX PCB is three PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots with each slot covered by an integrated heatsink; one of the slots is vertically mounted alongside the right-hand side memory slots. In the accessories bundle is an MSI M.2 Xpander-Aero Gen4 add-on card which allows users to install up to four PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 drives into a full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slot. There are also six SATA ports which support RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays. Touching on the PCIe support, the MSI Creator TRX40 has four full-length PCIe 4.0 slots which operate at x16/x8/x16+x8.
At present, MSI hasn't unveiled the memory compatibility, as the official specifications state that it supports up to DDR4-3200; we do know this model will support up to 256 GB over its eight slots. MSI's specifications state that up to DDR4-4666 is supported with 1DPC 1R memory, and up to DDR4-3866 with 1DPC 2R memory. For the first time, MSI is using the true 16-phase Infineon XDPE132G5C PWM controller with 16 Infineon TDA21472 70 A power stages for the CPU. Providing power to the CPU is a pair of 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power inputs which are located in the top right-hand corner of the board.
A total of nine 4-pin headers are located around the edge of the board with one dedicated to a CPU fan, one for a water pump, four for chassis fans, and a further three extend fan connectors. Underneath the actively cooled TRX40 chipset heatsink is a small overclockers toolkit with a two-digit debugger, a power button, and a reset switch.
On the rear panel of the MSI Creator TRX40 is three USB 3.1 G2 Type-A, five USB 3.1 G1 Type-A, and one USB 3.2 G2 20 G Type-C port; the 20 Gbps Type-C port is controlled by an ASMedia ASM3242 USB controller. Looking at the networking and MSI has included an Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 wireless interface with BT 5.0 support, as well as an Aquantia AQC107 10 GbE controller. The rear panel also includes an additional port powered by an Intel I211-AT Ethernet controller. At the left-hand side is a Flash CMOS button and Clear CMOS button, while the right-hand side has five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output powered by a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec. The microphone 3.5 mm input and front panel audio are controlled by the new Realtek ALC4050H audio codec.
The MSI Creator TRX40 is geared up for content creators and MSI has heavily focused on that in the marketing. One element to content creation is storage and with up to seven PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 drives supported out of the box due to the Xpander-Aero Gen4 M.2 add-in card in the buddle, it adds credence to this. The USB 3.2 G2 20 Gbps Type-C port is the next best thing to Thunderbolt 3, although it's only half the total throughput of TB3 overall, is still a nice touch. Another thing to note is both ASRock and MSI have a TRX40 Creator model in its line up; it's not good for users and creates confusion. The Creator TRX40 is MSI's current flagship for the Threadripper 3000 launch and has an MSRP of $700.
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PopinFRESH007 - Sunday, December 29, 2019 - link
PCIe is a serial point to point topology so each link or "lane" is independent (ignoring things like PCIe switches). This is different to the legacy PCI bus which is a shared parallel bus which would behave as you've described.Dionysos1234 - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
Any information on what memory is supported? ECC?Llawehtdliub - Saturday, November 30, 2019 - link
Yes ECC is supportedVatharian - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
Has anyone from ASUS actually thought even for a second about the PCI-Express slots placement? Using dual GPUs, until converted truly to single slot with water cooling, blocks most of the slots. In my case I'd need 4 or 5 slots, which leaves ROG Zenith II Extreme from their linup. And ASRock Creator. As much as I hate Gigabyte I must admit their Aorus line has sensible layouts, and MSI's are mixed bag.nevcairiel - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
These boards are clearly not designed for Dual GPU purposes, but instead actually offer quite some space for the primary GPU (3 slots is mandatory for many high-end air cooled cards these days), and additional slots for other 1 slot cards.eek2121 - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
Nearly every board I looked at in the article has spacing for multiple GPUs.eek2121 - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
I noticed you said 3 slots. I have a high end GPU, it takes 2 slots. The 3rd slot is extremely far away from the 2nd slot and could comfortably fit a GPU. Factor in the width of an m.2 drive when looking at the pictures above and you'll realize you are mistaken (many of the boards have m.2 slots in between, That is all the space you need for air cooling a GPU, since most high end hardware only takes up 2 slots, the 3rd 'slot' is actually where an M.2 drive would sit, and the real third slot is below it, leaving plenty of space for cooling fan air circulation).Spunjji - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
Serious question - are dual-GPUs even used these days?I know they're out for gaming, but I don't know the state of play regarding GPU compute.
Bccc1 - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
For GPU rendering (e.g. Redshift, Octane and VRay Next) dual GPUs are quite common and even quad GPUs can be used quite efficiently.eek2121 - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
I don't kow about the "blocking most of the slots" terminology. On my X399 board, only 1 slot is blocked (and technically you still could put a card in that slot, I actually had a low profile x4 card next to my GPU without any heat issues). On many X570 boards, spacing is such that no slots are blocked. In both cases, there are single slot GPUs, just not high end ones. As you've stated, using a custom loop allows for even high end GPUs to use only 1 slot.