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
ASUS ROG Strix TRX40-E Gaming
Moving onto the ASUS ROG Strix TRX40-E Gaming and it's the only TRX40 model currently to include the gaming tag line in its model naming. Cut from a similar cloth to the ROG Zenith II Extreme with its blend of black aluminium inspired design, ASUS has also included its LiveDash OLED into the rear panel cover, with support for DDR4-4666 and 256 GB across eight memory slots also featured. The ROG Strix TRX40-E Gaming is ATX in size and is designed for the gamer in mind, with plenty of features found on most HEDT boards making it a solid all-rounder.
The design of the ASUS ROG Strix TRX40-E Gaming is similar to its other gaming branded Strix models with its holographic digital colorful insignia on the rear panel cover and heatsinks; these areas are also customizable due to the integrated RGB LEDs. The power delivery consists of a 16-phase setup with 16 Infineon TDA21472 70 A power stages which are operating in teamed mode. Its heatsink includes active cooling with fans hidden between the grill and the heatsink, while the TRX40 chipset heatsink also includes a cooling fan. There are three full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slots, with the inclusion of a PCIe 4.0 x4 slot for good measure.
On the storage front, ASUS includes three PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, with eight SATA ports supporting RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays. Memory compatibility on the ASUS ROG Strix TRX40-E Gaming is competitive with support for DDR4-4666, with up to 256 GB supported across eight memory slots. Located around the edge of the board is seven 4-pin headers with two for CPU cooling fans, one for a water pump, one for an AIO pump, and three designated for chassis fans.
Looking at the rear panel and ASUS has included a whopping seven USB 3.1 G2 Type-A, one USB 3.1 G2 Type-C, and four USB 2.0 ports. Also present are five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output driven by a SupremeFX S1220 HD audio codec with dual OP amplifiers, a pair of Ethernet ports powered by a Realtek RTL8125-CG 2.5 GbE and Intel I211-AT Gigabit controller pairing. The ASUS ROG Strix TRX40-E Gaming also includes an Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 wireless interface with support for BT 5.0 devices.
The ASUS ROG Strix TRX40-E Gaming isn't the only gaming-focused board, and while AMD's Ryzen Threadripper 3000 processors will almost certainly be capable, the real advantages are had in multi-core optimized applications. With a price tag of $450, it combines a solid controller set with the usual ROG Strix aesthetics we come to expect from ASUS, as well as plenty of networking capability for uses outside of gaming.
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gavbon - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
We tested the 3970X and 3960X in our review (https://www.anandtech.com/show/15044/the-amd-ryzen...In the power testing, our chips hit 280w without issues, especially the 32-core. Which the definition of TDP is up for question, the CPUs seem bang on the power figures we saw
Hul8 - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
At least one reviewer got ~285 - 295 W power consumption testing Threadripper 3rd at stock, until they realized they had memory overclocked to 3600 MT/s.With the RAM also at stock (3200 MT/s), the power consumption ended up between 279 - 280 W, so just within the given TDP.
tamalero - Saturday, November 30, 2019 - link
Also, doesn't some motherboards (Particularly ASUS and Gigabyte) do minimal overclock by default on the "recommended settings" ?eek2121 - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
TDP != power consumed. TDP is thermal design power. The type of cooler itself can change the TDP formula in some cases (due to being part of the formula), and AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel all have different ways of calculating TDP.eastcoast_pete - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
Thanks Gavin, interesting article. Question: Your initial mentioning of the chipset says it's made on GloFo's 12 nm node, but it's 14 nm a bit later in the article. Can you clarify? Thanks!jeremyshaw - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
Since the last page has a picture of the chipset saying Made in Taiwan, it's probably either TSMC or UMC... unless if packaging somehow counts as "made in."msroadkill612 - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
Good spotting & there may be more to t than u think.Dunno, but others may?
I recall reading that the exciting new IO chip on Zen 2, & the TR chipset, are ~"cut an pastes" of each other - one is made by tsmc & the other by glofo.
This may be the source of the confusion?
Bccc1 - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
Thanks for this writeup. I'm currently drawn to Gigabytes TRX40 Designare and TRX40 Aorus Xtreme. Does the "40GB/s GC-Titan Ridge add-in card" work on any board?Any info on bifurcation support? Gigabyte is quite clear about that and offers x4x4x4x4 for the x16 slots and x4x4 for the x8 slots. Sadly no 8x4x4 or x8x8. MSIs manual explains the BIOS option "PCIe SlotX Lanes Configuration" with the sentence "PCIe lanes configuration for MSI M.2 XPANDER series cards/ Other M.2 PCIe
storage card." which sounds like x4x4x4x4 bifurcation to me, but is quite vague.
Is x8x8 and x8x4x4 supported on any board?
msroadkill612 - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
Bifurcation obfuscation?eek2121 - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
I can't speak to the current MSI offerings, but my x399 Gaming Carbon (off the top of my head, I don't use this feature, however) supports x4x4x4x4 and x8x8. Other modes may be possible, but I haven't looked.