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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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.