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 Prime TRX40-Pro
The last of the three TRX40 models from ASUS is the ASUS Prime TRX40-Pro. Part of its Prime series, it blends its usual white and silver aesthetic, with a more professional styling and straight-edge looks. The ATX sized PCB has plenty of features including three full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slots, three PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, and eight SATA ports. The Prime TRX40-Pro sits towards the bottom of its TRX40 product stack offering users the basics while remaining competitive with other TRX40 models.
Focusing on the design of the ASUS Prime TRX40-Pro, its main design consists of a silver and white color scheme, with a rear panel cover doubling up as a power delivery heatsink, and a M.2 heatsink which amalgamates into the design of the chipset heatsink. The board has three PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots with two of these sitting underneath a large silver aluminium heatsink, with the other M.2 slot installed vertically; an adapter comes in the accessories bundle. This also includes eight SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1 and 10 arrays. On the PCIe front, there are three full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slots, with a smaller PCIe 4.0 x4 slot located at the bottom. Directly below the PCIe 4.0 x4 slot is a power button, and a two-digit LED debugger. Next to this is a
As with the vast majority of TRX40 boards at launch, the ASUS Prime TRX40-Pro has support for DDR4-4666 and 256 GB of system memory across eight slots. The CPU power delivery looks impressive for a non-enthusiast model with a 16-phase design which is controlled by an undesignated controller. We know that ASUS using teamed power stages as they did with its X570 product stack. Delivering power to the CPU is a pair of 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power connectors, with one located at either side at the top of the board. For cooling, the ASUS Prime TRX40-Pro has seven 4-pin headers which include two for CPU fans, three for chassis fans, one for an AIO pump, and another for a water pump.
The rear panel includes three USB 3.1 G2 Type-A, one USB 3.1 G2 Type-C, and six USB 3.1 G1 Type-A ports. A handily located BIOS Flashback button sits towards the left-hand side, while on the right-hand side are five color-coded 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output controlled by a Realtek ALC S1220 HD audio codec. The single networking port is controlled by an Intel I211-AT Gigabit Ethernet controller.
Although the ASUS Prime TRX40-Pro omits things like Wi-Fi 6 and uprated 2.5/5/10 GbE ethernet, it still comes with an MSRP of $450. While it may seem a little off the mark in terms of pricing, the Prime TRX40-Pro has a very subtle and professional design, with a competitive feature set, and plenty of storage support for users building a workstation using the AMD Threadripper 3000 series processors.
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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.