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
Power Delivery Specifications & Comparison
One of the most discussed aspects on motherboards is the power delivery, with users generally favouring those with good specifications and efficient designs. The AMD X570 chipset heralded some appreciated improvements to its desktop range, but with AMD's 7 nm architecture stretching to the HEDT side of things , these improvements are expected of the higher-specification TRX40 models. The TRX40 chipset is similar in design to that of X570 with 'spare' PCIe 4.0 lanes designed to allow manufacturers to implement its own unique mixture of specifications through extra USB 3.1 G2 connectivity, and more PCIe 4.0 M.2.
Please note that this information is self-reported, so until we can review any given TRX40 board, we're operating on the honor system, trusting vendors to supply honest and upfront information. As we review the hardware we will be checking, and we will be keeping this page up-to-date as more information becomes available.
Note: We reached out to ASUS about its PWM controller, and they stated that it doesn't have a part number and is made exclusively for them. As we find out more information on this, we will update the table below.
| TRX40 CPU Power Delivery Comparison | |||||
| Motherboard | Controller | H-Side | L-Side | Chokes | Doubler |
| ASRock TRX40 Creator | ISL69247 (8+0) |
ISL99390 (8) |
8 | - | |
| ASRock TRX40 Taichi | ISL69247 (8+0) |
ISL99390 (16) |
8 | ??? (8) |
|
| ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme | Undisclosed (16+0) |
TDA21472 (16) |
? | - | |
| ASUS ROG Strix TRX40-E | Undisclosed (?+?) |
TDA21472 (16) |
? | - | |
| ASUS Prime TRX40-Pro | Undisclosed (?+?) |
TDA21462 (16) |
? | - | |
| GIGABYTE TRX40 Aorus Xtreme | XDPE132G5C (16+0) |
TDA21472 (16) |
? | - | |
| GIGABYTE TRX40 Aorus Master | XDPE132G5C (16+0) |
TDA21472 (16) |
? | - | |
| GIGABYTE TRX40 Aorus Pro WIFI | XDPE132G5C (12+2) |
TDA21472 (12) |
? | - | |
| GIGABYTE TRX Designare | XDPE132G5C (16+0) |
TDA21472 (16) |
? | - | |
| MSI Creator TRX40 | XDPE132G5C (16+0) |
TDA21472 (16) |
? | - | |
| MSI TRX40 Pro 10G | ISL69247 (6+0) |
ISL9939 (12) |
? | ISL6617A (6) |
|
| MSI TRX40 Pro WIFI | ISL69247 (6+0) |
ISL9939 (12) |
? | ISL6617A (6) |
|
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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.