The MSI Creator TRX40 Motherboard Review: The $700 Flagship for Threadripper
by Gavin Bonshor on February 26, 2020 11:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- MSI
- Ryzen
- TRX40
- Threadripper 3000
- Creator TRX40
- 3970X
- sTRX4
MSI Creator TRX40 Conclusion
The MSI Creator TRX40 is an interesting motherboard for a number of reasons. Firstly it's the cheapest flagship model from the major brands, with an MSRP of just $700. Secondly, it keeps high-end feature set with an Aquantia AQC107 10 gigabit Ethernet controller and has the ability to install up to seven PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 drives out of the box with a bundled Xpander Aero Gen4 PCIe M.2 add-in card in the accessories bundle. It's also one of a trio of TRX40 models in MSI's line-up, with the Creator aimed squarely at content creators and professionals alike with its subtle black and grey aesthetic.
For storage are three hardwired PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, while an MSI Xpander Aero Gen4 allows users to add four PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots into one of the full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slots. Also featured are six SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays. Touching more on the PCIe, MSI has included four full-length PCIe 4.0 slots which run at x16/x8/x16/x8 and is a good example of Threadripper's HEDT and TRX40 capabilities in terms of PCIe real estate. On the rear panel is plenty of USB with nine Type-A (5 x USB 3.1 G1, 4 x USB 3.1 G2), and a single USB 3.2 G2 20 Gbps Type-C port, which is impressive. The eight memory slots support up to DDR4-4666, with a maximum capacity of up to 256 GB.
The performance of the MSI Creator TRX40 motherboard is on par with other models and remains competitive in our CPU and gaming-focused tests. It performs middle of the road in our system tests with a decent POST time of 30 seconds. Power consumption in our testing shows the MSI Creator TRX40 to be one of the more efficient TRX40 models so far with consistently lower load values than the ASRock TRX40 Taichi and ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme. The Creator TRX40 also performs well in our overclock testing and the five of the seven OC Genie 4 profiles come with better than anticipated load CPU VCore voltage than we've seen from the company in previous years. Thermal performance in our VRM testing also shows the efficiency of the true 16-phase power delivery for the CPU with very reasonable temperatures which peaked at 53°C when paired with our testbed AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X 32-core processor.
With an MSRP of $700, the MSI Creator TRX40 looks great value for money when compared to its competing models, the ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme ($850), and the GIGABYTE TRX40 Aorus Xtreme ($850) which both have their own merits and reasons for the extra cost. The MSI Creator TRX40 is a no-frills option which ticks a lot of boxes in terms of specifications, features, and performance, but in a modest black and grey aesthetic with everything but the kitchen sink included.
With its highly efficient and powerful 16-phase power delivery, it's one of the best from MSI in a long time, and for the unlocked nature of AMD's Threadripper 3000 series including the 3990X 64-core model, users looking to overclock extra performance at the expense of insane power consumption and heat output, the MSI Creator TRX40 is a good foundation for it.
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Korguz - Wednesday, February 26, 2020 - link
then i guess this board is not for you :-)FreckledTrout - Wednesday, February 26, 2020 - link
This is how you do motherboard testing. I just read a motherboard review on TomsHardware and it was horrible. They didn't even use probes for checking temps jump a thermal image which we all know can be misleading for actual temperatures especially if VRM's are short. Nice job Gavin!p1esk - Wednesday, February 26, 2020 - link
I don't know, the proper way to test it would be to load it with GPUs, given it's "Creator" model, then run all cards with realistic loads (either compute or video content creation). But for those use cases I'd go with ASRock Creator, since it has 4 GPU slots (so that you can actually install four GPUs in it, unlike this one), and costs $450.Dug - Wednesday, February 26, 2020 - link
Except you know nothing on performance of the board except cpu overclocking.There's absolutely no subsystem testing at all which is very important, such as USB speed tests, multiple hard drives, network, sound, etc. This is what makes or breaks a motherboard. Overclocking is not really the top consideration for people that buy threadrippers.
dan82 - Wednesday, February 26, 2020 - link
I'm currently looking into the parts for a TRX40 machine. I'd like to maximize the number of Type C ports on the front and back, and wow that is quite difficult. Most of the boards (including this one) only have a single port. Same thing with PC cases. Many cases have zero, if you're lucky you'll find one (the only exception is that dubious "Fake Mac Pro Case" on Indiegogo).Either I am the only person to care about these things or motherboard (and PC case builders) are completely blind to see the opportunity.
Pessimist9 - Wednesday, February 26, 2020 - link
Who's willing to spend 700$ on something from MSI? This must be a paid review. MSI is a terrible company with a terrible warranty service. Just recently, I purchased a 2080 TI Seahawk EK X from them. Card was bad. I call customer service, and the guy tells me it's my fault, that it'll take 6 weeks to process the RMA, and if I really cared about reliability, I'd have a duplicate card for redundancy.Attempting some sort of compromise, I suggested MSI place a hold on my card and immediately send me the (refurbished) replacement. Nope. "Sorry, sir; we treat everyone the same."
Alright. So there you have it, everyone. Pay the premium price (1450$) on an MSI product and I hope you've got a spare for redundancy's sake. After all, a real enthusiast would.
^ yep, that's what the rep told me. So... buy a MSI motherboard for 700$?
TheWereCat - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
I had bad experience with all brands, so should I stop buying from them and make my own HW?Lord of the Bored - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Yes. Yes, you should. That is the one true way.Droekath - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
You having a bad experience makes it a paid review? If MSI was truly as terrible with their product design and manufacturing as you say they were, they would have gone out of business long ago, not become a major player in the market.Your experience is completely valid. There are plenty of people who have bad experiences with plenty of companies. But that doesn't make every single company a terrible company. It just means you had a bad experience with them.
As for your experience, they're required to adhere to internal protocols. They can't automatically treat a customer specially and ignore the protocol for you.
Lord of the Bored - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Well, what did you do to make him say it is your fault? Inquiring minds want to know.