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 Zenith II Extreme
Moving onto what ASUS has up its sleeve, and it has gone with a trio of new motherboards with each designed for a different target market. The first of the three is the ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme which is the premier model on TRX40 for the company. Following on from its ROG Zenith Extreme X399 model, the new ROG Zenith II Extreme for TRX40 builds upon it with an aluminium heatsink cover surrounding the PCIe 4.0 slots, an aluminium rear panel cover, and a solid steel backplate on the rear of the board. Some of the main features included are the LiveDash color OLED 1.77" screen integrated into the rear panel cover, support for up to five PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 drives, a Wi-Fi 6 wireless interface, and an Aquantia 10 GbE controller.
The ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme is an E-ATX model which sits at the top of the ASUS TRX40 product stack. Its design is very interesting with lashings of aluminium via the rear panel cover, the armor covering the PCIe slot area, and the actively cooled TRX40 chipset heatsink. The rear panel cover has an integrated LiveDash color OLED screen which measures in at 1.77", and can be customized with the LiveDash software in the included software suite. There is integrated RGB LEDs too which are located within the rear panel cover, the chipset heatsink, and on the underside of the right-hand side of the board. A total of four full-length PCIe 4.0 slots which operate at x16/x8/x16+x8, and is accompanied by two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots on the front of the board, one PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot on the rear, and an additional two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 available through the ROG DIMM.2 module within the accessories bundle. There are also eight SATA ports with four controlled by the chipset, and four from a pair of ASMedia SATA controllers; only the four SATA ports from the TRX40 chipset support RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays.
On the power delivery, ASUS is using a similar design to its X570 models with a 16-phase design with 16 Infineon TDA21472 70 A power stages operating in teamed mode. The large aluminium power delivery heatsink has two small Delta Superflo fans to aid cooling, which the finned heatsinks are designed to optimize surface area with low resistance for airflow. Providing power to the CPU is three inputs which consist of two 8-pin 12 V ATX, and one 6-pin 12 V ATX power connector. Cooling support is extensive with seven 4-pin headers which are split into two for CPU fans, two for water pumps, one for a high-amp fan, and two for standard chassis fans. The board also has an LN2 mode jumper for extreme overclockers, a safe boot button, an OC retry button, a dual BIOS selector switch, and power/reset buttons.
On the rear panel of the ROG Zenith II Extreme is five USB 3.1 G2 Type-A, one USB 3.1 G2 Type-C, four USB 3.1 G1 Type-A, and one USB 3.2 G2 Type-C 20 Gbps port. Networking support is strong with an Aquantia AQC107 10 GbE controller, and a second port powered by Intel I211-AT Gigabit controller. The Wi-Fi comes from an Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 wireless interface, and also adds BT 5.0 connectivity for users. On the left-hand side are a BIOS Flashback button and a clear CMOS switch, while on the other side is five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output which is powered by a SupremeFX S1220 HD audio codec; this includes an ESS Sabre ESS9018Q2C DAC.
The ASUS ROG Zenith II Extreme has an MSRP of $850 at launch and sits as one of the most expensive TRX40 models, yet one of the most premium. One of the primary benefits is that enthusiasts and power users can use up to five PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 drives as the ROG DIMM.2 slot makes itself a prominent feature on ASUS's high-end models. There is a lot of enthusiast-level features with a lot going on for extreme overclockers including ASUS's teamed 16-phase power delivery for the CPU, with added LN2 mode and an overclocker's toolkit.
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dan82 - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
I wish those boards had more Type C ports and dropped some of those A ports. A type C port can easily be turned in an A, but vice versa is against the spec.Also serious question: what is the reason to keep A 2.0 ports around? Are there any devices that don’t work on modern ports?
jeremyshaw - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
Probably much easier to route one old and slow data pair vs 1-4 high speed data pairs.I have many devices that will likely never need more than USB 2.0 - my Mouse and KB included. USB microphone as well. The best external device I've got that benefits from USB3 speeds is my Bluray burner, and we all know how popular those are. External USB flash drives are usually limited by the cheap NAND inside, and most of my external storage is on my network.
For others, I suppose USB capture cards? Really decent USB 3.0 flash drives? Even if I connected my phone to my PC, it's still limited to USB 2.0. Maybe a decent external card reader? These boards reviewed here are all ATX, so I'll rule out USB NICs. I've got to be missing something in my list.
eek2121 - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
There is still the odd device that doesn't work on USB 3.0. Also the last 2 machines I've built did not have fully functioning USB 3.0/3.1 ports in Linux, indicating lack of driver support for operating systems other than Linux. In short: USB 3.x is still a WIP despite being out on the market for quite a while.Llawehtdliub - Saturday, November 30, 2019 - link
Plz no. Dont do an Apple. Just beczus you cant think of a reason to use doesnt mean others cant.There is a reason to leave them.
dotes12 - Saturday, November 30, 2019 - link
Bring back PS/2 ports too? /sasmian - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
I'm a little confused by comments on the X570 boards that will probably apply to these also. With these new PCIe4 slots (and M.2 slots), is it the case that they are all completely independent and you can mix/match PCIe2/PCIe3/PCIe4 cards/drives freely at each one's maximum possible negotiated link speed? Or will putting (say) a PCIe2 RAID controller in any slot reduce all slots to the lowest common denominator, PCIe2 speed?voicequal - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
PCIe lanes are wired directly to the PCIe controller on either the CPU or chipset, so link speeds between slots are independent. PCIe 4.0 is backward compatible with previous generations 3.0, 2.0 & 1.0, so running a PCIe 2.0 card in a slot capable of 4.0 will run at 2.0 speeds and not affect adjacent lanes on other slots.Some motherboards allow you to reduce the maximum speed of PCIe lanes from 4.0 to something lower -- this can help to troubleshoot signal integrity issues. This setting sometimes does affect lanes across multiple slots. But as long as you leave it to Auto, the lanes will run at the highest compatible speed between card and controller.
WaltC - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
Yes, in most cases the slots auto-configure to the device connected. Gen 3 devices should happily coexist with Gen 4 devices with each running at spec. In the case of the GPU, you can run it at Gen 3 if you prefer even if it is a Gen 4 GPU natively--there's separate switch for that in the bios, but the slots auto-configure for other devices and the GPU bios switch doesn't affect any other slots.I was surprised to see that several of the mboards had no rear clear-CMOS button on their backplates, and thought that was an interesting omission from the article--and the article also failed to mention dual-bios mboards--which the GB Aorus Xtreme & Master have (pictured mechanical switches) --one would hope they all might have them. Seems as if both these important features would be worth a mention...
dotes12 - Saturday, November 30, 2019 - link
Is there any downsides of going to PCIe 4.0? Maybe something similar to DDR3 and DDR4 memory where the bandwidth increases, but the latency goes up too?PopinFRESH007 - Sunday, December 29, 2019 - link
not really no